


At Hel's Edge

by misreall



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies), Tom Hiddleston Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, F/M, Kidnapping, Kissing, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Possession, Seduction, Sex, Slavery, Thor AU, Vaginal Fingering, Viking Era, Viking Loki, seriously AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-05-23 19:17:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 69,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14940284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall
Summary: Two brothers - one light, one dark, an annoyed god, a curse, a girl, and a sacrifice that must be made.





	1. The Curse

**Author's Note:**

> And now for something completely different. Well, not completely. A historical saga about brothers who seem familiar, a woman who may seem like someone I have written about before, and about a god named Loki, who isn't either one of them but does take an interest in their lives.

There were many stories about Bredg’s mother Verða, that famed and curse’d she whose very name meant ‘a thing that must be dealt with.’

The ones her son knew to be true were few enough.  That she had been a slave - brought home by the king after visiting the settlement in Armorica - with filthy black hair and snarling teeth was known by all.  It was said she was wild, and ugly, with big features and a cruel, oft cursing, mouth, but that she had a clever, ravenous cunt that the king - having taken her to bed when the queen was too great with child to be meddled with - was unable to free himself from once he had been drawn within her power.

The king had her bathed and her hair deloused.  He had her draped her in linen and gold and let her laugh at the golden and red haired maidens who wanted to be his second wife.  

The other slaves went in fear of her, knowing she would relieve her spite upon them - biting and punching for the mostly imagined slights she endured, her long, thin arms holding surprising strength.  Once, when an assassin had breached the hall while everyone slept she had woken and, after watching him slit the throats of the lazy guards who had fallen asleep, she took the king’s spear from the wall and threw it with the might of a giantess, impaling him to the wall, and then painted runes around his dying body with his blood, cursing those who sent him.

The king gave her arm rings that he might have given one of his jarls, because he said she was fiercer than any of them.  She would take the mead cups from hands of his feasting warriors, getting drunk on their wine and like them would pull pretty girls onto her lap and kiss them until they swooned and fought for her favor.

She refused to tell anyone, even the king, where she had come from before she had been captured.  Or what her true name was.

One time she said she was from the dark forests past the lands of the Rus.  Another from Hibernia, from the lands of the Tuatha de Danann under the hills where time stopped and started at the will of their gods.  Still another story had her from the Maghrib, where she had been born to a surviving Vandal, one those whose empire had been overrun by Byzantium, and one of those Berbers who had killed the Byzantines in their turn.

It was said she was actually a troll wife, using dark magic to look mortal and deceive their king to some unknowable end.  

It was known that only the queen was exempt from her malice, having been a legendary shield-maid in her youth and a powerful  _ fjǫlkunnig  _ afterwards.  The queen had even made herself a cloak of white bear fur and eaten the raw heart of an elk killed by her magic, and was welcome in the hut of the oldest  vǫlva, who was gifted in prophecy.

Verða respected the queen alone, and so when she was dying after having birthed Bredg, she called for her.

“Would you have me save you?” the queen asked, giving her a sip of watered ale for strength.

“No,  _ dróttning _ .  Death frees me.  From your man’s pawing hands, from the stink of the mead hall and the fucking cold.  Take my child. Raise him with your Soren. Let them be brothers and then I can go into the many-colored lands with no fear.  You are a better mother than I would have been to him.”

She turned her head and looked at Bredg, his eyes the color of her true home, his hair a black mass of curls, and kissed him with the only tenderness anyone had seen from her.  At the same moment a great log within the firepit cracked, and she laughed. “My gods are far from here, so let your fire god, the strange one, Loki, be my child’s patron.”

“You should not wish it so.  Loki would torment even those he loves.”

“Just like all men,” she answered, dying.

The queen gathered the babe up, wrapped in the blanket that had covered his mother, and carried him to her chambers. 

 

Years passed.  The slave’s son was raised beside the queen’s, to love each other, to fight each other, the golden bear cub and the black wolf pup, brothers in all ways.  

They came to their majority in time, the king ready to step aside for his and the queen’s son, knowing that his other child, more clever and subtle, would ever speak wisdom to his brother, who was often in need of cooler council.

All admired and sometimes feared the king’s sons, Soren the Golden with his strong arm and ready laugh, and his brother Bredg the Black, with his sly gaze and keen-edged tongue, were as inseparable as day and night, one ever following the other.  

Soren, mountain shouldered and ocean-eyed, was beloved of the warriors and shield-maids, armed with an axe and boar spear he could knock forth a turtled warband by his strength alone, though he was much skilled in arms and could, when his patience could be found, be a leader without equal.

Bredg, kestrel swift and leaf-eyed, was beloved of the wise folk and those who were wise enough to desire peace.   But when battle came few were braver, as he moved like the wind itself, speeding past enemies who were cut and dying before they knew that they had been touched by his gutting knife.

The night before Soren was to take his father’s seat at the head of the meadhall, they drank with their comrades and boasts were made. Of feats on the battlefield, and at feast, and in the bedchamber.  Only Bredg kept his own council, drinking moderately and speaking little, neither of which was his wont.

He had since rising had a feeling of ill-omen and so remained sober that he might watch over his brother.

Soren drank deeply and boasted long into the night.

Of how his arm was touched by Thor and struck as hard as the god’s lightning.

Of how his brow had been kissed by Freya, and so he was gifted with her beauty and her battle-wisdom.

Of how his will was fashioned by Odin, and so was strong enough to rule even the fierce and independent North men.

And on and on, thanking all of the gods for their gifts to him.

Save one.

As any child who has heard a story at an old lady’s knee knows, you must never forget just one.  And if you do forget just one, it should never be Loki.

When Bredg warned his brother, as they walked through the velvet darkness, that he had forgotten the God of Mischief, the Lie-smith, whose favor all men will need some day, Soren clapped him on the back.

“Thank him for me, brother.  He is your patron, after all.”

Sighing, the king’s black haired son knew that he must try and protect his brother, even if he was a fool.

So that night Bredg stood in the kitchens, where the hearth is Loki’s altar and where the wise house-woman thanks Him for unburned bread and properly cooked meat, and poured mead and claimed his brother’s gift for winning maidens to his bed came from Loki, whispering clever seductions into his ear, but the Jotunn god, Odin’s blood brother, would not be appeased by these words.

The next morning, Soren woke, raving and tearing at his flesh, an invisible fire tormenting him.  He would calm for a time, long enough to drink water and eat a few bites of food before falling back into madness.  Only his mother’s hand on his forehead and the force of her seidr would allow him rest. 

The queen sat on the edge of his bed and sang to him as she had when he was a babe until he calmed and slept.  Then she called for her other child and walked with him outside of the hall, but not straying far, should she be needed.

“Bredg, you must go to the  vǫlva and ask her to beseech Loki and find what will offer Him comfort in His wrath, to spare your brother, or I think he will die a madman.”

“Mother, will she speak with me?”

“For my sake she will.  Do whatever she asks.”

The vǫlva lived in a hut near the forest, far from the hall and the farms of the other folk, for they feared her and they bored her.  The floor was clean, her few furnishing well-kept, a pot of soup boiled on the fire, and her garden was neatly weeded and flourished in the early summer light.  All as would be expected from any aged widow of good standing.

But from the ceiling hung the cleaned and rune-carved bones of a hundred animals, from the vole to the boar to man.  When Bredg entered the breeze that followed him rustled them, so they made sounds of like flutes and chimes. 

“I know why you are here, son of two mothers.  To save your brother. Why would you wish to, when if he is mad you might be King?”  The woman’s gown was covered in the beaded necklaces of a thousand tributes from the warriors who had come to her for luck and blessings before going Viking and had returned with gifts of gratitude and fear.  Her face was covered in wrinkles, each speaking of her knowing years. 

“I do not wish to be King.  It is better to control the one who sits at the head of the meadhall than to be that one.  I love my brother, but he lacks wisdom and I would rule through him rather than in his place.”

“You are honest for one who is loved by the God of Lies.”

“No.  But I am wise enough to know who deserves my truth.”

She laughed, and offered him water.  “You are to go raiding soon.”

“My father has called off the raid to Hibernia, since my brother cannot lead the party.”

“No.  You will go and lead.  There is monastery of females near the coast, with fat farms and lazy farmers around it.  When you take it there will be a girl there with fiery hair, which marks her as Loki’s own.  You will take her to the rock where He was bound and shed her blood there, that He might be comforted in His wrath at your brother.  Her blood will soothe the venom of the viper that drips onto His face when His wife must empty Her bowl.”

Such a sacrifice, such a request, was harsh even for one such as Loki.

Bredg frowned, “There are red-haired girls aplenty here.  I could shed the blood of a hundred in the time it would take me to go to Hibernia and drag her all the way to His rock.  Surely the blood of one maiden is as red and as sweet as that of any other.”

“But He  _ wants _ the Hibernian girl,” she said, as if speaking to a dim child.

 

Nóirin was weeding Sister Agnes’s secondary herb garden, hidden in the trees when the Northmen came.  

She had been cursing the holy sister for an hour as she worked in the dark, her fingers stinging as she brushed thistles and then burning as the oils from some of the healing plants found their way into her wounds.  But the nun had insisted that the weeding must be done under the light of the full moon due to the delicate and efficacious nature of the herbs.

Which was bollocks as far as Nóirin was concerned.  Some business from one of the massive Latin books the Sisters kept.  She liked to read them herself, Sister Constantia having taught her the language of the old Romans just like she was one of the proper Novices and not just a servant taken in for charity’s sake, but most of them were filled with learned nonsense when it came to farming.  Stuff written by men who had never turned their hand in the dirt.

Still, she couldn’t complain.  Sister Agnes had decided that Nóirin would be her assistant since none of the current group of Novices had any aptitude with medicine, so her work was less strenuous than many of the other servants.  No working the fields or washing the endless reams of linen the holy woman dirtied, she never mucked the pigs and only had to scrub the floors in the infirmary and the herbarium. And listen to the Prioress’s urging her to take orders.

“Although your mother left you here and we have taken you in as a charitable service, you are a bright girl, Nóirin.  Not like the other servants, you could actually accomplish something with your life if you were to take orders. I could even see you starting your own monastery, if you could get your head out of the clouds for more than an hour at a time,” the elegant woman said, offering a complement as an insult and an insult as a complement.

“Rather not,” she had answered, offering no more explanation to turning down a flattering offer.  She also appreciated that the Prioress had not mentioned the honor of offering her life to the glory of Christ in her offer.  It was one thing to turn down earthly glory, but even though Nóirin’s people followed the old ways it didn’t do to insult any of the gods.  Especially the one who insisted He was alone up there.

The Prioress had been right about her thoughts being in the clouds.  Or, rather, they were simply far from the cloister. Nóirin once dreamt of life in a village, as a wife and mother.  

She dreamt of it  _ once _ .

And then laughed herself silly.

What she wanted, truly wanted, was simply to go!  To be free of the Sisters, of the other servants who resented her favorite status and then also were proud that one of them was considered special, of the Novices who hated her for being little more than a slave and yet speaking Latin with hardly an accent and yet wanted her to be their friend because they were all lonely little girls.  Free of the coast and sound of the sea that taunted her with its stories of seeing the world. 

To wander in the mountains.

To see cities, proper cities, like Rome or Constantinople.  

To take a boat upon a great river and watch the world she passed.

She cut her finger on her spade.  

“Fucking garden!”  She stood, sucking the wound, and when she was upright the alarm bell in the tower tolled.

Raiders.  

Leaving the basket of herbs, tucking her knife back into her boot, she ran back to the cloister, fleet and sure as a long eared hare, her earth-brown braid a flag behind her.

 

Bredg’s men were wild and eager.  He had chosen his raiding party for their wits as much as for their strong arms, but no man who went a-Viking was cool-headed.  Save Bredg himself.

“Remember,” he shouted above the roil of the sea as they approached the shore, “take what you will - gold, food, slaves, but -”

“Any red-haired girls are to be brought to you!”  Half of the men called.

“Untouched!”  The rest finished and all laughed.

“Don’t worry, Jarl Bredg, no one will take the  _ auðr  _ you’ve claimed, especially as you have said you will take no other plunder.  Hel’s tits, we’ll find you more red maids than even your cock will know what to do with!” said Thorvald, Soren’s closest sword-brother, who alone knew why their leader sought such a girl but played ignorance.

The boats glided upon the land with no more sound than a goose’s wing on the air, and they were on the farthest outlying farms before a signal could be raised.

There were no red haired girls there.  Ravens aplenty, brown haired farm maids, even a golden young wife, but none kissed with fire.

But Bredg knew she wouldn’t be found amongst the sheep, she would be in the shelter of their god’s women.

When the fires were seen the bells sounded and he knew they had to reach the convent before they could shut their gates.  The foolish women would leave them open for the peasants to run to for as long as they could and now it was a race through the fields and the thin forest to reach it first.

His men and the few shield maids who raided with them moved through the forest wolf-like and fast, prey scented and hungered for.  Bredg saw them trample a garden of healing herbs. Someone had been there that night, a basket of fresh cut plants perfumed the air.

The screams of the slower Hibernians sounded as the surest footed of his men reached the clearing where the monastery stood.  They would be in. 

All was on fire when Bredg arrived, the air filled with soot and the smell of blood and fear and rage.  

He had eyes only for the girl.  She had to be here.

“There are no girls here!”  Thovald’s hoarse voice found him as he searched the chapel, filled with aging nuns who prayed to their Roman god and pretended that the Northmen were not there, under the stern eye of their Prioress.

“What?” Bredg was tired and filled with fear for his brother.  The farmers in the courtyard had put up a fight, more than was expected.  

“No girls, only these holy hags.  They must have had another way out and sent the maidens through it to spare them.”

“Find it!”

 

The cave was but ten yards from the tunnel that they had followed out of the cloister, but  Nóirin could lead the novaites no farther.  The Northmen were everywhere, searching for them.  

For rape.

For slaves.

She had done her part, as had been instilled into her over and over by Sister Agnes should this happen, that she was to take the girls - Novices, servants, the younger nuns - and lead them to safety, no matter what else should happen.  Because she was the cleverest, and the bravest.

Nóirin felt neither now, though she had been proud as anything when she had been given the important task.  Should the Northmen come. 

Now they were trapped, in a cave that felt smaller by the moment, that would sure be found by the Northern devils so loudly were some of the girls breathing.  The leader of the Vikings, the looking like very devil himself, black-haired and tall as an ancient tree, looking more to be a Gael than one of the raiders, was driving them in their heathen tongue.

It was like he could smell they were near.  

The girls huddled close to her, trying to not sob, afraid in the dark, all holding torches they could not light, all wanting her to do something that would save them.  The littlest, Grania who was the cook’s child, clutched her hand and buried her face in Nóirin’s skirt.

They were so close to the path that would lead them to safety, if the Northmen would only look away.

They needed a distraction.

Nóirin fiddled with a piece of flint like it was a holy bead and prayed for an idea.  Even a mad one. Which was the kind that came to her. With a hasty beseeching of Brigid, saint of the springtime or the goddess of fire, she wasn’t sure which she whispered to Dione, the oldest and steadiest of the novices.

“You have to take them up the path.  Keep them quiet and safe,” she whispered as she started to unhook her apron.

“And where will you be then?” the girl answered, furious, anxious, and wisely quiet.

“Out there, making a spectacle of myself,” she answered, and then added, “see if there is any pitch on one of those dark torches, then.”

“What for?”

 

It takes a great deal to distract men hunting for girls.

But one girl can do it.

If she is mad.

And brave.

And shouting like a  _ bean sí. _

And naked,

And her hair is on fire.

 

The girl ran from what looked to be nowhere straight through the mass of Bredg’s raiders, screaming loud enough to wake the dead in Ran’s hall, her long legs carrying her past the stunned men, who jumped back from the fiery rope of hair that followed her.

Bredg gave a harsh laugh and tackled her, hard enough to drive the wind from her as they rolled in the dirt, and she struggled like a wildcat but had the strength of a kitten in her scrawny body, and no idea how to fight.  Straddling her, the burning braid of her long, long hair wrapped about his fist, he leaned in and said in her ear, low and sneering, in priestly Latin, “If you come quiet then I won’t tell my men where you’ve got the other’s hiding.”

She glared at him, her eyes lit with by fire from her hair, her lips set in a growl.  He could see the defiance in her eye die. 

She nodded.

One swing of his seax severed her braid, which he threw into the trees so he could no longer see her, and cursed his God for a bastard.


	2. Homeward

Bredg, soaked and furious, stared at the mad fool that he was meant to kill and wondered if Loki would accept her last breath being taken in Ægir’s Hall beneath the icy water rather than having her blood shed.  

Certainly, it would please him to hold the woman’s head beneath the waves until her struggles ceased.  Though it would mean his efforts to save her from that very sea would have been for naught, but oh the satisfaction of it!  Her hands batting his uselessly, the bubbles rising from her wailing mouth, as he smirked down at her…

Seeming to feel his regard, she looked up, her rime sodden hair in strealish locks over her eyes, like a wolfhound caught in a rainstorm.  For a moment she appeared simply worn and discouraged, but then her lips raised in impudence and she offered him the shameless finger along with the mocking smile.  

She had seemed so quiet at first, docile even.  That was where Bredg saw his mistake was founded.  Any creature who would set themselves alight and run through a crowd of raiders intent on slaves to take and woman to despoil would never be docile.  Her quietude was in truth the menace of a viper that waited by the path to strike an unwary ankle. 

After he had freed her from the burning brand of hair, Bredg had kept his word, leading his men from where he knew the other maids were hidden in the rocks.  There was plunder enough - gold from the chapel altar, the wealth of the abbess, the animals and foodstock they would take, and the farmer’s young who were not so lucky in their protectors.  

He had even had a care for her comfort and safety with his raiders, wrapping her in a tapestry pulled from the cloister.  She had swung it over her shoulder like a Roman matron painted on a villa wall, proud as if she were free and not a former slave to the nuns and now to him, walking to the boats without a touch of maidenly fuss and taking the seat near the prow at his side with no word or glance to him.  

Bregd had neither bound or shackled her, he had thought in a moment of foolishness the sea and his kindness to the other women would be restraint enough.

Loki would never desire a woman who was of no trouble.

When they had rowed out of sight of the misty coast and the rising light at their backs turned the sea in a raging fire, the ungrateful little bitch had risen and run like a startled mare past his men bent to their rowing, flying like a hunted doe past the roped and weeping captives who raised their cowardly heads to cheer.  

As she leapt from the back of the vessel she had shouted out “bás in Éirinn” and then let the waters take her.

Kicking free from his boots and cursing his brother, Bredg followed, diving like a seal, his body shark-strong in the water, unlike most of his men who feared being dragged down in Ran’s great net.  Reaching, he caught the scorched hair that was left to her and pulled her up with him to the boat, though she twisted and tried to bite. 

Thorvald laughed at the sight of them and had been the one to pull them aboard.  “Fire, now water, eh? Watch yourself, or this one will jump from a cliff or bury herself alive to escape you,” he said, slapping Bredg’s back, his sodden tunic squelching.  

Mannerless now, Bredg dragged the girl back to the prow. He tossed her cover overboard and it lay upon the waves for a few moment before sinking.  “That might have been worth something,” one of the men, Oren most like, grumbled.

With rough jerks her wrists and ankles were tied and he pushed her to the bottom of the boat where he could trap her with his legs.  “Stay still or I’ll let my men have you when we reach home,” he gritted down at her in Latin.

“Better them than you,” she answered, her Latin heavily accented.

It took his will to not kick her.

“Do not tempt me to let them start now, you hound-faced bitch.”

She was very still for a moment, staring at him, blank as a stone and but shivering.  Then she barked at him!

One ringing bark, sounding for all of the world like a dog calling to warn her master of a coming enemy.

After she lifted her head, haughty and high-nosed as a goshawk, and turned her back to him, jostling his legs with her own.   All as if she was decked in beads and arm-rings, braids crowning her brow, sitting at the head of a great mead hall of warriors, rather than half under his seat, naked and cold, her hair charred, in the bottom of a raiding ship.  

The icy waters must have been worse than he had known, for he found his chest was tight as frost-bite.

 

Noirin couldn’t find any way to be comfortable with the rough ropes about her and under the wet, boney feet of that black-haired fucker. _ That one _ , who had taken her in the first place for whatever reason.  

The cold didn’t help, nor the sound and feel of the deep ocean rushing just beneath the bottom of boat.  

Eventually, as the cloud of night overtook them she found that she had fallen asleep.  When she woke there was a bit of cloth over her and some soggy bread near her head. A few lanterns hung, stirring in the cold breeze and casting disturbing shadows.  Though the water seemed calm enough the boat creaked. The rowing had stopped for the time at least. The other prisoners - Dier’s oldest son Connor from the nearest farm to the Priory, Grania who was their midwife, and Donal, a wee boy of maybe five who stayed with his drunkard of an aunt - all seemed to be sleeping.

The raiders were some asleep and some were talking in that rough _ ‘yopyopyop’ _ tongue of their’s, passing a skin.  No doubt filled with that piss tasting honey drink they favored.  Or maybe wine stolen from the Prioress’s stock.

_ That one _ , seemingly confident that she was not going to try to jump again, had joined them.  She could hear his voice. It was clear above the water and the sounds of the other men laughing and speaking.  Clear because it was deep. Because it had the tone of command. Of one who was always heard.

Pulling herself up with her hands and feet tied was not easy and she was grateful that no one seemed to see her fall over twice before she managed to sit upon the bench.  The cloth that had been over her slid to off and whilst she missed the little warmth it had gifted her, it was not as if she had modesty left to save. Still, she hunched forward as she ate.

The bread was terrible, but she ate every bit and wished for water.

Clean water.  To wipe the taste of the sea from her mouth.

Sweet Mother of Christ, before she had splashed in, it had seemed a fine idea to jump and die!   

Then there was the cold of it hurting like taking a beating, the salt finding every cut and scrape she’d been left with after  _ that one  _ had speared into her and taken her to ground, and the sight of the weak sun fading through the waves above her head, had all told her that she’d rather live to see what was to become of her.

Still, would that it hadn’t been  _ that one _ who’d saved her.  His snakey fingers wrapping about her arm, about the back of her neck.  Even in the numbing water she could feel the marks they would leave.

Better to have been saved by the mad, huge one who had dragged them both from back into the boat - laughing and making no demure about staring at her not substantial breasts - would have been better.

For one thing, he didn’t frighten her the way  _ that one _ did.

Oh, all of the Northmen were all fearful creatures, of course.  Hulking, hairy thieves and raping monsters, smelling of blood and salt, coming in the night like the cold dead who Manannan took to the underworld through the sea.  How many times in her life had they hidden from them while they took and left misery and hunger behind? And before her life as well? It was in her bones to fear them.  But that was the matter of it, for she knew how to feel such fear, it was as settled a thing as the thirst in her mouth.

Their leader, though.  

The fear she had of him was a different order all together. It was like a tightness moving all of the way through her.  Being close to him when he had cut her hair, or after he had chased her into the water, as he stared through her with those uncanny, impassive green eyes, his thin lips but a line, frowning like he was annoyed by the very sight of her yet she was something he must endure, was like when she sat too close to a fire - sometimes a spark hit her and she jumped.

She could hear his laugh joining that of the other Northmen.  Looking up, she saw him notice she was awake. He was too far to see his face, but his shoulders tightened and when he walked up to her, wineskin in hand, she could see that expression again.  Dead eyes, starved mouth, and drawn brow. 

Mean as a snake.  But pretty as a Óengus Óc.  

He was like that spark.  There was a feeling of all that was random to the man, as if he might do anything at any moment and there was nothing Noirin could do to be ready for him.  

Sitting beside her, he held the skin to her lips, “Drink.  You look like meat dried by the fire.”

“I’ll have none of that foul honey drink of yours, thank you.  Thirst is better.”

Rolling his eyes, he laced his hand through her hair and with more care than she would have thought, pulled head back and poured what was mild ale into her mouth.  “You’ll drink. You’ll eat. You’ll not try that trick of jumping again,” he whispered, tense-lipped, to her ear, “little  _ auðr _ .  You’ll reach my father’s lands alive.  What condition you are in beyond that is doing.”

The lick of his words on her skin was like a shudder.  As he spoke his fingers tightened about what was left her hair, naught but snarls now, and the tension made him pull her closer.  

Noticing, he pushed her away again, but did not let go.

It would have pleased Noirin beyond what tongue could tell to spit the ale into that one’s eyes, but her body could not be denied.  The thirst that had only seemed in her mouth turned into a rage to drink. Her skin ached for it, her throat was dry to pain, even her blood suddenly seemed slow and she drank eagerly, gasping like a child to races to finish his drink so he might go back to playing. 

 

“I see why you want that one, Jarl,”  Ranveig, one of his shield-maid’s, voice called out.  “The way she takes that skin would surely give a man ideas.  But she’d bite it off of you for sure if you tried. She more like one of us than those other sheep-folk.”

“I’d as soon cut it off myself,” Bredg answered quickly, making the men laugh and make cruder jokes that the girl could not understand but could tell the meaning of by her scowl at them and him.  She stank of fish and sweat and burning, but so did he. Switching back to the priests language, he said to her, “Go back to sleep. You’re strong. I’m thinking you served the holy women so you’ll be taking your turn on the oars tomorrow.  Are you sick from the rocking at all?”

She ignored his show of concern.  “Cut these off or I won’t catch a wink.  They itch and are making my hands and feet numb.”  She thrust her wrists under his nose. 

With an experienced hand, Bredg ran a finger under those restraints and the ones about her ankles as well.  He could feel her blood pulse quickly in both places and she was only sea-cold, not from her bonds.

“They’re as they should be _.   _ I know my business  _ auðr,  _ and you are far from the first girl I’ve tied up.  If you are good I’ll cut you free for rowing. Otherwise, you might hit yourself in that proud nose with the oar,” he added, giving that bit of her a light flick.

“I’m not a dog, though you keep calling me that.  I give you my word I’ll not jump again.” 

He believed her.  When he had gotten in the water after her she’d not fought him and at first he thought she was too tired for a struggle, but then had seen in her eyes that though she wanted to be free, she wanted to live just as much.  But it was not to be risked.

His brother was not to be risked.

Shaking his head, he rose to leave her, “No.”  With a quick motion he pulled her legs up onto the bench and then covered her with the bit of old sail he’d placed over her before.  “And I’m not calling you dog. Dogs are smart enough not to bite their master’s, about you I doubt that could be said.”

Behind him, he heard her grumble in Irish, “I’ll bite you, alright, you cold bastard.  And I’ll draw blood when I do.”

He wanted to laugh but held it in.  Best she didn’t know he spoke her tongue.

 

By the end of the ten day crossing back to the raider’s home Noirin, who had always been rather cheerful - as being displeased with life did no good and changed nothing - had a list of hatreds as long as both her arms, her legs, and the bloody oar that had left her already callused hands ripped up every day she leant to it topped it even above  _ that one. _

No, that was a lie she was telling.  She hated that one even more than the oar, since he was the one who put her behind it near to every day.

Her shoulders were as sore as if they had been whipped, as well as her poor hands. Oh, her hands! They would never have been pretty after the work she’d done, but now they were ruined forever. And her thighs were bruised from where she sometimes lost control of the oar and it banged up and down.  At least the tunic she’d been given after that first night was long enough to cover them, and the bruises on her arm from where that one had grabbed her in the water.

One time the oar had hit her chin and she’d flown back onto the one of the raiders, dazed.  At least that had earned her the rest of the day without work, though her ears rang and every time she tried to sit up right the dizziness sent her back down or to the side to vomit up the thin ale, dried fish, and bread that were all they ate.

Even Bredg, that one’s name as she’d learned, seemed like he might consider being worried about her that time.

He’d still never asked her name, of course.  Just called her  _ auðr,  _ which Noirin suspected meant nothing flattering.  Or accurate.

She hated the thin ale that tasted of the bad goat skins they kept it in.  She hated the dried fish, which was oily and foul and splintered like wood between her teeth.  She hated the big Northman named Thorvald, who looked at her like she was a sow at market. She hated their stupid language and their terrible music, as there was one amongst them who fancied himself a bard and would beat a drum and sing some barbaric nonsense to cheer them as they rowed.

Would that she wasn’t afraid to die.  It was almost enough to send her back into the water, those songs and that drum.

She also hated the smell of everyone, and the hairy faces of the stupid men, and the two females amongst them who found something about her funny and were forever pointing at her and then saying something to that one about her, and laughing like gulls as they wheeled over the shore looking for dead things to eat.  

He’d just scowl at the women, mostly never answering but sometimes snapping a quick word or five that would make them blush and shuffle their feet like girls.  Or make them laugh all the harder while he brayed along with them, like the big donkey that he was.

She hated the boat, though it was a beautiful thing with nary a leak and the wood as smooth underfoot as the flagstones of the priory.

She hated the grey and blue and green of the water, and eternal sound of the wind shifting the sails, and the wind that froze them at night and then gave no mercy from the endless sun during the day.  Save the one time it turned in to a storm and almost sent them all overboard.  She hated the sun, how she hated the sun!   And knew that her skin that burned when anything touched it was like a ripe apple, though not so tempting as one.

By the Christ what she wouldn’t give to have an apple, and then a bottle of cider that had been cooled in the river?  Not that she had anything to give. She no longer even owned her own, hurting skin. 

The Northmen must have had lookouts, because there was a group, cheering and rushing to the water to help pull the boats ashore.  Noirin was pulled from her seat at the oars and her wrists re-tied though her legs were left free, “Come quiet and I’ll let you bathe tonight,” that one said to her.  And then, sniffing her like an animal, make a face, “I’ll let you bathe either way, but still come quiet.”

“You’re a ripe bunch of dead fish, yourself,” she answered.  Normally she’d never take a bath this time of the year, but after the days on the water nothing could have sounded better.

When he lifted her down, she took two steps and then fell over, her legs having forgotten the land and it’s strange stillness.  The wet sand under her hands felt like heaven itself and she made fists. Then she found herself lifted and carried up the beach.  “You’ll be fine,” he told her.

“As if I don’t know.  We’ve fishermen where I come from,” she added for no reason.

From the crowd of happy folk going through the things that their raider had stolen from her people a woman, older, beautiful, and stern as the sea they had just left approached them.  She wore a coat of white fur though the day was far from cold, and her hair was in a golden knot at the back of her head. 

She said something to that one, nodding towards Noirin but not looking at her.  And he answered. She had learned a few words of their language on the boat, but not enough to follow beyond his saying, "yes' and 'her' and 'soon.'

Now the woman looked at her and said something.  After staring at Noirin for a few moments she turned and walked away.

“What was that, then?”

“My mother.  She said you don’t look like much.”

“And why should I?  What should my looks have to do with anyone but me?”

He looked down at her, not in that blank way that was his wont, but considering.  His brows drew together and his lips were small with thoughts he did not share. Instead he put her down, “You should be steady now.  I’ll get my things for you to carry.”

 

  
  



	3. Rest

Noirin was surprised to find that  _ one’s things  _ consisted of only a bundled cloak containing an axe, some extra leg wrappings, and a small bag that held his razor and a comb.  

She knew what they held because her vain master had shaved his pretty face clean each morning and combed out his black hair like he was a merrow-maid in a story.  Though all of the raiders seemed fairly dainty, with their neatly tied braids and face-washing each day.

He lay the bundle over her arms so he did not need to untie her for the so long walk to his house.  Her legs were still wobbly, and unused to walking, so they burned and ached by the time they reached where they were going on the uneven, rising ground.  

“Where’s your share of the boodle, then?” she asked, looking at the other raiders from their boat and the others as well, all lifting out baskets of stolen food and goods.  Dier and Grania had already been lead away, each bowed under packs belonging to their new masters. 

Donal, she was shocked to see, was up on the shoulders of that big one, Thorvald, laughing and when he saw her looking he waved with a sunny smile.  But then, his aunt had been a nasty bitch, Noirin thought. He’d be no worse off with that brute and maybe somewhat better. 

“None of your concern,  _ auðr,  _ now lift a leg.  We have a ways to go.”

At least, she thought, he didn’t live in those mountains that circled them, giant though he was.  Her poor feet could barely stand the walk after ten days of sitting. She felt every minute of the hour it took to get where they were going.  At least the sun was a hidden and the day on the cool side or she’d have fallen over and the shame of that would kill her dead.

His house was out far past the great, long building where their king lived, with many stables and a vast pastureland. Then past many other farms, out to a thin tree line where there was a solitary building, larger than the farmhouses, decorated with carved wood at the lintel and on the painted crossed beams of the roof, which was of wood rather than thatch.

They looked like dragons.  

Save for the King’s house it was the finest one she’d seen.  Far grander than the farms and cottages the rest seemed to live in.

It was surrounded by a bit of a farm as well.  The land looked poor and thin, but he had a nice field of onions laid out, with a neighboring one of beans, and a kitchen garden with herbs and leeks and the like.  There was a boy, tending to a small string of ponies in an enclosure. They were wild looking, but their manes and tails were neatly kept.

Noirin snorted.  Of course they were.  

“Bredg!” the boy called out, hopping over the low fence.

He looked nothing like that one, but they embraced like brothers.  But she had noticed the raiders seemed great ones for uncalled-for hugging and backslapping and all the like.  Noirin saw a few chairs up against the house under the eaves and started to sink into one of them, but Bredg put a hand to her shoulder, shaking his head but not looking at her.

Her whole body longed to beat him to death and then lay down for the rest of the year, but instead she bared her teeth at him.  But as he wasn’t looking, the fieresome effect of her was lost.

They  _ yopyop’d  _ at each other for a bit, with some gestures made towards her now and then.  The boy looked at her with a frown, cocking his head from side to side. Then he circled her.  Noirin tried to turn so she wouldn’t have her back to him, but he was back around quick enough.

Truth was, there wasn’t much to her, especially after ten days rowing and eating salty bread and a bit of dried pear from time to time.

He said something to Bredg, shaking his head.

“Well, now, what is this one saying?”  She hated the aggrieved tone in her voice, but she was getting tired of being looked at like she was a bowl full of oats being given to a man who expected a haunch of venison.

“He agrees with my mother,” that one said, in a tone that implied that he could see their point.  Then he took the bundle from her and handed it to the boy. “Come, you’re not going into my house until you’re clean.”  

This time he did see the look on her face and it made him laugh like the great, tall donkey that he was.

A few yards beyond the house there was a half shed of sorts, sheltering from view a perfectly round pond lined with neatly laid rocks.  The water within it was as clear as if it run from mountain snow and had a thin layer of smoke scuttering and waving over its brink, as if it was hot.  The shelter had a bit of a bench, with cushion even.

With a flick of a knife that he’d not been holding the moment before, Bredg cut the bonds about her wrists, leaving them braceleted with red, indented flesh.  A hiss came from her before she could stop it. They hadn’t been too tight, but it still hurt. For a second he took one into his hands and started to rub the sore skin, then dropped it with some haste.  “Take that thing off, I’ll probably have to have it burned,” he said, gesturing to the old tunic she had been wearing for days.

She’d been naked when they met, and he’d even lain upon her then, and what he hadn’t seen that night he had surely seen when she’d run the length of the boat to jump, but suddenly Noirin felt shy before him.  She grabbed the hem of the garment and pulled it down as it would fly off in its own.

“Turn around then,” she said, knowing from his expression that if she didn’t take it off it would come off just the same.

Oh, the lovely shock on his face for that moment, his fine, black brows peaking above those eyes that for once had an actual expression in them rather than looking like she was barely there at all.  “Are you in earnest? Just remove it and get in the water. You’re foul.”

“It’s different,” she snapped.  “I’ll take it off but turn your back.”

His mouth opened a bit and his eyes turned thin and mean.  “When I tell you to do something, you do it.” His hands formed fists that he opened and closed.  Clearly that one was not used to being gainsaid or having his dog balk at his orders. 

“And so I will, when I see the back of you,” she said, her heart racing, staring at his fists, fearing her voice sounded weak.  Fearing him. A bit. More than a bit.

“You are my property.  I could do anything I want to you.  Beat you. Rape you in the middle of the feast hall.  Get. That. Off!” 

That one could be a bard with lungs like that she thought, her hair blown back by the force his voice.  Surely the Prioress back in Ireland could hear him and was thinking, “Only Noirin could make someone so irritable.”

Trembling but stiff, _ she _ turned about and in a quick motion pulled the tunic off and then tossed it hard over her shoulder at his head and stepped down into the water before he could push the dirty cloth off of his face.

And then screamed her lungs out at the heat of it!  

The water was boiling the skin from her bones.  Clearly the Northmen were cannibals on top of being thieves and despoilers and she’d been dragged here to flavor the soup!  Gasping and flailing about, Noirin tried to grab the edge of the pond and pull herself up, but the wicked bastard pushed her fingers away with the dirty toe of his boot.

“Don’t make such a fuss.  I have the finest bathing pool in all of my father’s lands.  Many a maid has begged me that they might… enjoy themselves here.  I’ll bring you the soap. Don’t try to get out or I’ll have Kjell ride you down.”

His long, long legs had him looking like he was about a mile above her, and for a moment he just stared down at her, an unknowable look on his face.  “Relax. And don’t drown.” 

Even as he spoke she could feel the heat growing from agony to just discomfort to an odd sort of comfort.  Muscles that had been abused and locked for days started to soften, which made them ache anew, but in a way that made her groan a bit.  Even the roughness of the water on her skin grew gentler as the water was surprisingly silky. She stepped back on her toes which just barely touched the bottom, feeling buoyant and finding the weightlessness a pleasure.

He kept staring at her for a few more minutes and then left, taking her dirty tunic with him.

She wondered for a moment if she could rip some cover from the cushions and be gone before he returned, but it seemed too much effort for too little hope.  And she had no doubt he would take a switch to her if she tore his belongings, so instead she lay on her back, her eyes closed against the weak sun.

 

It had been worth being struck in the mouth with dirty linen to hear that annoying woman scream.  

Had she waited he would have warned her that his bathing pool was fed from a hot spring in the hills, but she’d been too busy being stubborn and acting like a refined Frankish princess suddenly.  As if he hadn’t seen everything her rather meagre body had to offer, and that it would be hardly the more toothsome now after ten days of sea rations and rowing? 

How bothersome.  He’d known she would be nothing but trouble and now she was proving him right.

But how much more bothersome that his first inclination had been to turn his back and respect her sudden modesty?  And that he rather admired her stubbornness, knowing that she would be nothing but trouble to the last moment.

The last moment when he slit her long throat and bled her into the rock.  

Shaking his head to free himself from the image and the too vivid feel of how she would struggle and fight, of how her flesh would part easily beneath his knife, and she would slowly still as her life ran over his fingers and she went cold and limp.  

His hands convulsed around the tunic, tearing it, and he threw it onto the midden heap near the goat pen where it would be burned later.  

Kjell was in the house, putting together a meal.  “So you really took no plunder other than her?”

“You know why,” Bredg answered, grabbing the wooden soap bowl from the cupboard by the door.  Then, thinking of it, he climbed the ladder into the space beneath the eaves. There were several trunks there - ones to hold his horde, ones to hold the books he had stolen, ones to hold the components of his magic that were too dangerous to have elsewhere, and in the farthest back, one holding Liv’s things.

Crouching, he made his way to it.  In the darkness he could not see much within but there was a wave of scent - cloves, and the lavender that he’d brought her from Paris.  He sunk his hands into the cloth within, eyes closing in remembrance of the feel of her body under the warm linen. Freya’s cunt but how she had felt, her skin butter-smooth and yielding, her hair wheat-fair and smelling of the oil he’d made her, that she would comb into it every night.  

Angry with his maudlin cock for twitching at what could be only sentimental memory, he quickly grabbed a dress at random and then found a pair of turnshoes on the bottom.  The hide was a bit cracked, he could tell with a practiced fingertip, but solid enough for the Irish scold, who had feet with soles of leather and doubtless had hardly had shoes to wear in her life.

When he climbed down Kjell frowned at him.  “I thought all of her things were gone. You’re not giving that to the slave are you?”

Bredg looked at the dress he had taken.  It was pine-needle colored with deep bands of embroidery at the cuff.  The apron that would cover it was not with it, but there was a brooch of gold worked in whorls and other fancies at the neck of it.  It had been Liv’s finest, worn to the feasting, and the pin that held the neck had been his gift to her.

Taken from Ireland.

“She can’t be naked and I’m not losing another shirt to cover her.  Unless you have one you want to give up?” Not that they would hide much, the woman was taller than Kjell who’d yet to sprout up.

“But wasting it on a slave.  I could give it to Solveig…” the boy said, wistfully thinking of the girl he had an eye for but who was older and also taller than he was and already had more suitors than Kjell had chin-hairs.

“It’s just a dress.  And Solveig has a father to give her dresses and a mother to take a stick to you if you try and meddle with her daughter.”

Bredg grabbed himself a change of clothing, and his comb and razor, and headed quickly back to the pool, not sure that she might not try to leg it, clothed or no.  Just for the spite of making him chase her down.

As he approached he heard her, her voice a fine thread of silk floating on the air, coiling about within the clouds of steam from the pool, rich and fine.  Her back was to him, as she watched the fading sun as it fell in the direction of her homeland. She was working burned knots from her hair with her fingers.  Leaning like a birch in the wind upon the sheltering wall that hid the pool from the house, he listened.

_ “Is é a shúil an t-éadrom an lae, Tá an oíche ar a chuid gruaige. Agus buíochas le breá breá a thugann mo chroí leis. Níl aon saol agam, gan aon saoirse, Is é grá an Tiarna ar fad _ ….”

(The twilight gleam is in his eye, the night is on his hair. And like a lovesick lenanshee he hath my heart in thrall. No life have I, no liberty, for love is Lord of all….)

Her voice was sweet.  Enough to make her worth the trouble of taking her in the first place.  

It was a good lie, one to satisfy anyone that he could not trust with the truth of why he’d been so intent on having her and nothing else.  And he trusted no one, save his mother and Kjell. And Soren, whose madness made him unreliable but meant that none would take in his raving words are true.

He listened until her voice faded and his irritable heart settled itself.

Quickly undressing, he climbed into the water, startling her so she crossed her arms, virgin-shy, over her breasts.  “What are you doing then?”

“You said it yourself, I stink as well.  Here, it’s soap,” he said, floating the bowl over to her after taking a handful and working it into his filthy hair.  

“I know what soap is.  I’ve scrubbed the floors and myself, thank you.”  Her voice was lacking it’s usual tartness. She sounded dazed.

When he cleared his eyes of suds he saw she was staring at him, bowl in hand, her head cocked.  Her brown eyes were near to black, from the darkening sky. She looked uncertain and the rose flush on her cheek was from more than the heat of the pool.

No, it was from the sight of him, body bared, scars of war on his shoulder and thigh, his proud cock, still half hard from the memories of Liv and from the sound of her singing voice in the thin air, the husky longing of which would have stirred a man from his funeral pyre.  

Bredg shrugged to himself.  It would hardly be the first time he’d caught the eye of a maid.  His beauty was a joke amongst the jealous boys and husbands, and a luxury he had used to bed widely and well, save for this last year where he had slept cold every night.

He could step to her, though the soft water.  He could take her in his hands and kiss her till she begged him to twine his fingers between her legs and soothe her there, until the Christian modesty fell from her and he could lick there, too, the place where honey would pour from her and onto his waiting, starving tongue.  When she was love-weak and lax with screaming he could sink his cock into as slowly as he had sunk into the hot water, filling her, feeling the grab of her cunt and he would be slower even then. 

So slow she would thrash and beg, and he would have to hold her down and would fuck the wildness out of her, and the meaness from himself.

He reached out and slopped a handful of soap on to her head.  “So use it then,” he said, lifting his legs and in a stroke taking himself to the far edge of the pool to finish cleaning himself in peace.

 

That night, they had eaten the oats with dried berries and boar jerky that Kjell had prepared, with the woman surprisingly quiet and almost asleep over the meal.  She had worried at the elaborate brooch that held the dress together, having frowned at the sight of it, knowing from where it came. After the meal, though it was not late, Bredg had given her a blanket and told her she could sleep by the fireplace, though the mild night meant it wasn’t lit.

Kjell went to sleep in the byre, he did in the summer months.  Come winter the woman would be gone and he could lay his pallet back by the hearth again.  

Dead, he said within his mind.  Not gone, mince no words with your own conscience, the woman would be dead by winter.  She would be dead before a week had passed, should he have his way. He only needed the vǫlva to tell him where Loki’s rock was to be found.

Bredg, exhausted himself and knowing he would have to present himself to his father the next day, and would be expected to lead the boasting about their raid at the feast, took himself to be earlier than was his way as well.  He would have to see Soren as well, and his mother in private, as they could not speak with frank words in the mead hall where they might be heard.

He woke once, when the moon was starting to fall.  The slave was crying. A quiet sound, as much of exhaustion as it was of grief and homesickness, now that all was still and she could think on her fate. 

“Sleep,  _ auðr.   _ Tomorrow comes soon enough,” he said, trying to keep his voice free of feeling.

She made a snorting noise, full of scorn, “My name is not dog!  It’s-”

“Shhhhhh…” he hissed.   

He would never know her name.  Never say it. Never thinking it.  She had no name. 

He slept with no trouble the rest of the night through.


	4. The Quiet Time When Nothing Happens and Everyone Waits

Noirin woke just a touch before she normally did at the monastery, which was to say enough time for a few tasks before the sun rose.  

It was as dark in the land of the Northman as it was at home, but the mornings were chilling as there were no kind woods nor friendly quays to block the sweep of the wind.  Nothing but a thin line of white barked trees beside that one’s house, and distant mountains to stop the blowing even in these summer months. Everything was as desolate as it was in winter at home, but without the hope of kinder weather to come.

How could people live somewhere so empty without going mad, she wondered as the wind howled down the chimney.  It was was Iunius, for sweet Christ’s sake and it sounded like the darkest of Mensis Ianuarius out of doors. At least the farmhouse, with its luxury of three rooms, thick wall, and planked floor, was solid and let in none of the strangely cold air.  

She lay there for as long as she could bear it and then made it a bit longer, twitching on the hard floor that had prodded her already sore body all night long.

Noirin shook out the long, shockingly soft gown that she’d been given to wear after she cleaned up and left the uncomfortable shoes behind, creeping with care to the door.  She knew from her time on the boat that her new master slept light as a colicky baby and it was good that he kept the hinges of his fancy house well-oiled so she was able to step to the outside without a creak or cry of the door.

Alas, she walked almost into that rather rude boy who had had made their meal and stared at her through the whole of the eating.  As if she were an animal brought to the table. 

He started at her, as they met in that place where the light of the moon was nearly gone and that of the sun had just begun to be seen.  “Hey!” he said, grabbing her arm and saying the only intelligible thing that had come from his mouth yet. He shook her hard, and Noirin gave him a mighty shove.  

It was one thing to be given scorn and mistreatment by one who could run like a stag and take her down with no thought nor expense of effort, by one of their Jarls, but to be handled by a mere boy, a slave most like as she was?  No.

And shorter than she was?  No.

She dealt him a buffet and shove that sent him off of the raised walkway that circled the neat farmhouse and then with a lift of her chin that she’d seen Prioress give to the travelling priest when he came to hear confessions from the nuns and acolytes, she lifted the fine skirts of her dress and started off away into the dying night.

Before she had gone more than a few paces, the boy righted himself and grabbed at her ankle, shouting towards the house, “Faðir!  Faðir!” And some other words - as loud as the crash of waves in the quiet morning - as he wrapped himself about her leg like a snake that would squeeze her to death.

Noirin kicked at him, trying in Latin, Irish, even the few words of terribly bad Saxon and worse Frankish that she knew, in an urgent hiss, to tell him what she was doing and why he needed to let her go.

The door slammed open behind her and in a flurry of movement her arm was taken and she was pulled free of the boy and pushed against the wall of the house.  That one had a hand leaning on her aching shoulder to pin her in place, the other holding one of those long, chopping knives his kind liked so the point was pricking the hollow of her throat.

The boy was dancing around behind him, shouting his nonsense and trying to see over his shoulder.

“Where did you think you were going to go?” that one asked in a voice weary and disgusted at her idiocy.

Weary?  Why should he be weary?  He had slept the night through.  She had heard the deepness of his healthy breath, punctuated now and then by a sound from his dreams that she had wished through every minute of the waiting dark would turn into nightmares that rode him into the ground.  Him! Acting tired! And she being the one who had been awake all night, the creaks of a strange house, the hollow sound of the wind across the empty bowl of land that house was in, the fear that had finally taken in her, its roots spreading from her heart through every limb and portion, until she had found herself sobbing, not knowing what he wanted with her, knowing she would live her days amongst these tall, frightful folk who thought she was less than nothing.

He had not clothed himself yet, and his body was close to hers, his, his …  _ part _ brushing the skirt of the too fine dress he had given her.  With the jewel that had been stolen from home the same as she had been.  

Noirin felt herself gulp, unable to get enough breath to speak.

“Where?  You fool.  You’d get lost and fall down a fjord, or be taken by someone else to be a slave, or  _ starve _ !  Are you that much of a fool?”  He grew madder by the word, now shaking her, the knife thankfully in a tight fist at his side. 

She tried to push forward but could only manage to move her head, so strong was he.  Their faces were inches apart, more than close enough to bite the nose from his pretty, pretty face. To bite his tense, wet, open lips off, while she was at it.  For that matter, get his throbbing pulse beneath her teeth as well. She would show him who was a dog when she worried the blood from his neck, great spurts of it while he was helpless and thrashing under her rending mouth.

Shaken and shaking, Noirin pushed harder to get away and then finally screamed in his face, “I needed to relieve myself, you rotten fucking motherlover!  Of course I have nowhere to go! You’ve stolen my life from me!”

As if suddenly touching a flame he sprang away, “Uhm, ah… that way…” he stuttered out, pointing to a small outbuilding that she’d noted the night before.

Now in painful need for it, Noirin hated that she must look like a fool but she hiked the skirts and ran towards it.  That one, all arrogance recovered, called out, “Did you learn those words from the holy sisters? How educational… Maybe I should have taken one of them as well.  A man can use a tutor with a ready tongue.”

She forced herself not to laugh so she wouldn’t shame herself and hated him even more for the guffaw she that couldn’t stop after she had done what was necessary.  Instead of returning to the house she ran to the shelter of the byre and let herself howl as soon as she heard the door the house close. 

 

Bredg, brow raised and mouth ironic, looked at Kjell who was blushing.  “I thought she was running away,” the boy said, pushing past him into the house.

No sooner had the door slammed than he heard a startling sound from the  _ garðhús. _  He took a few running steps towards it, heartslammingly fast.  Sometimes adders found their way into the outbuildings and while the poison did not kill the illness it caused was foul.  He pulled open the door to find her gone.

For a moment he was enraged, certain she had lied to him and was running like an idiot for the hills.  But he could hear her.

She was laughing.  

Laughing as hard as she had cried the night before.  Great, snorting whoops of laughter that he could tell she was biting on her fist to silence.  But she could not. He stood and listened to each giggle and then as she would start to stop, it would begin again, made worse no doubt by her trying to stop.

It was coming from the byre.  She had clearly hidden herself there, not wanting him to know she had found what he said funny.  In spite of him treating her as he had this morning, shoving her about like he had, in spite of her crying all night, she was laughing and laughing and laughing.

What manner of woman was she?  If she were mad then why would Loki want her, as sure her madness and the chaos she could create with a laugh like that would make her Loki’s darling one?  

Because by his bastard of a god’s balls that laugh and the memory of her song the night before made Bredg hard as granite and ready to find a way to throw her under him to see whatever sounds she could make.

Rather than staying, knowing he could easily find himself at her side in the byre, acting out at least one of the images in his head, and upsetting the goats, he used the jakes himself and then plunged in the bathing pool to clean the smell of it and lust from his flesh.  When he walked back to the house he saw the woman standing outside of the door, clearly torn about it to enter.

She watched him walk through the spreading light that crept into the valley.  He wondered if she knew why she stared, why she found herself as drawn to his body as he seemed to be to her … bloodyminded peculiarity and anything that came out of her mouth that was not directed at him.  Most like she had no clue, being that she was raised by those apparently dirty mouthed women of god. The poor thing probably had no more idea of what was going on between her legs than she knew what her eventual fate was.

“Get in there for breakfast.  Then we have work on the farm,” he said, passing her by.  He looked her dress up and down, “I’ll find something that you can wear that can be soiled without regret.”

 

Noirin rolled her eyes to the clouds and wondered which idiot god had thought it wise to gift a charmless bully with the face and body of a  _ Gancanagh _ and a pecker that would startle a cow if she found it on a ready bull.  The unfairness of it all that she should finally meet a man who might be able to satisfy a girl in a proper way and he was  _ that one _ .

The next three days went much the same in the morning, without the ruckus with the boy.  They would all wake about the same time - the men would, Noirin would most often have slept little and be waiting for enough light to go pee by since they kept the tinder and candles locked up from her and she couldn’t yet find her way in the dark.  Then they would eat whatever the boy put up for them, be it more millet, or bread smeared with some foul-odored fish paste and then it was to work on the farm. 

He had taken away the dress and broach and given her an old, long tunic and leggings, but let her keep the shoes, though she went without them most of the time.  He also gave her wrappings for her legs such as he and other men wore, but she could see no point to them other than they might be a joy to strangle him in his sleep with and so bothered without them.

That one gave her some rough instructions but seemed to know that she could weed a patch and milk a goat, or muck a shed and pick a row of beans, as well as any.  Then he would dress in some manner of finery, certainly more prettily than he had before and damn his eyes but it suited him, and be off for the day, doing not a lick of work.

Nor, for that matter, did the boy.  Kjell. He seemed to feel that Noirin’s presence meant that he could spend his time playing with those shaggy ponies and tossing knives into a target.  Whenever she would try in Saxon to tell him she needed his aid with something he would just pretend he understood less than he clearly did, and go back to what he was doing, perhaps a nap, sniggering up his sleeve at her.

She put up with it for two days, and then, when he was not paying attention, she unlocked the paddock and spooked the horses, who were faster than their short legs might betray.

They were gone in moments, heading to the hills, with him chasing and shouting and making a damned fool of himself by scaring them worse.

Noirin wasn’t sure what relation his was to her master, but be he son, brother, serf, or slave, he would get an ass-tanning that the Northmen would write one of their sagas about if he didn’t get those ponies back by nightfall when that one would return.

She let him chase them as they circled and wheeled about like birds in open sky, hooves like soft thunder in the peaty soil of the open space beyond the sown fields, until he was too tired and dragged himself back to the house to lay on the ground by the house and glower at her as she went quietly about her work.

As the sun started to dip and hide, Noirin pulled some dried apples and oats from a bag and poured warm water over them in a bucket.  Then, grabbing the bridles and some rope, she went to the field where the ponies shied from her. Instead of following she placed the bucket down and sat a few feet away.  As soon as she was still, the hungry animals who’d found no good grazing on the weak land started for the bucket, nosing each other out of the way as the fought for turns at it.  So distracted were they, she was able to bridle them all and when the bucket was empty they happily followed as she took their leads back to the farm.

On her way into the house she scuffed a bit of dusty earth at the still staring boy and that night received an extra portion of beans and even a bit of the bacon they were cooked with.  And the next morning he sat down beside her and started weeding the herbs.

He pointed to a caraway plant and said, “Karve.”

She nodded and repeated it.  “Karve.”

He pointed to the soil, “Mold.”

The sky was himinn, the sun was sunna, the farm and buildings were heimili, to ask was beiða, to cry was veina.

To laugh was hlæja.  Which was what that one found them doing that night when he returned, with a face like a storm that was waiting to happen and a clear displeasure at the sight of them convivial and side by side, working on dinner together.

“Go clean yourself,” his voice was a scowl, “after we eat I am going to my father’s meadhall.  You can serve me there.”

Kjell looked up, eager, asking a question that was quickly answered in a deflating way.  

Noirin took the soap bowl and one of the large number of combs the man had and went to the hot pit of water.  Even with foreknowledge it was a shock to her system, but her body was pleased to be soothed by it and she probably took longer than she needed because he had come looking for her.  

He had the fine dress over his arm, and what looked to be an apron made of black wool.  “Why are you so slow all of the time?”

“Because I don’t care if I waste yours,” she answered, finishing rinsing her wild, short hair.  She used a bit of cloth to rub it dry and made a flicking gesture in the water until he sighed mightily and turned his back.

The apron went over the green gown, and had a pair of little round pins to hold it in place.  It was chill at night in this place even in summer and she was happy for it. She had finished tugging the shoes on, hopping a bit in place, when he turned back.

“Do we still have time before we go to eat?” she asked.  

He looked at her, his head shaking.  “Sit down,” he pointed at the bench.

“Why?”

“I won’t have you shame me with your appearance.  Your hair is like a peasant.” 

“Yes, it would be terrible for your people to see your slave looking like a peasant then, would it?”

“Just sit,” he said, again rolling his eyes and pushing her on the shoulder as she tried not to wince.  

He took the comb she had brought and then pulled a small bottle from his belt.  He opened it and poured whatever it held on to comb and he worked it well into the wood and then started pulling it through her hair, catching on snarls and making her yelp.  

The smell of rosemary and lavender filled the air and in a few moments the comb passed through her hair like a finger sliding down a sharpened blade.  He stopped and she felt his fingers in her hair, then along her scalp, tenderly rubbing where he had caused the pain before. She felt her eyes close and her shoulders slump.  

He froze, but his touch remained, then he spoke, “Get your things, dinner should be ready.  I need to bathe yet.”

She gathered the old tunic and leggings.  “If you keep bathing like that you won’t have any skin left to you,” she said, leaving for the house.

Behind her she heard him answer, “Jeg har gniddt den ene litt i nærheten av nakken allerede.”

They left for his father’s hall when the moon was just turning the world silver with no lantern to light the way.  He told her to grab the end of his belt and hold on since he could walk the distance without eyes. He had dressed himself in a long, open coat of quilted green velvet over a black shirt made of silk and suede leggings tucked into the heavy boots he’d worn a-Viking.  Before he had put on his coat she’d seen gold rings glinting on five deep on each of his upper arms and leather wrappings studded with gems on either wrist. 

He smelled of smokey cedar and salt and his hair gleamed like the night above them.

“Why are you taking me, then?” she asked, certain it was because he didn’t care for her making friends with the Kjell.

“We always show off our plunder to the king after returning home,” his teeth gleamed in the moonlight as he smiled, leaning to whisper, “and he gets to pick his share.  Maybe he’ll take you off of my hands.” 

Then he turned and walked quickly on those long legs, the leather of his belt snapping between them before she stumbled after him in the dark.

 

 

 

 

 

  
  



	5. In The Hall of the King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bredg takes Noirin to meet his parents.

 

They cut through the darkness of night, each step taking them closer to the warm lights of the town and the golden glow of the King’s great mead hall, bedecked with the shields of his fallen warriors, shining with the plunder taken from his foes.  Geirvaldr, king and first in battle, and Kærr, queen and witch, would sit at the head of the hall, listening to boasts, offering largess, and receiving offerings. 

Even now, still at the edge of the settlement, Bredg could hear his father’s scop’s harp perfuming the air with music, accompanied by his apprentice who played the pipes.  

“What’s that?” the woman asked, stopping, his belt jerking in her hand.  Even though it was light enough this close to town to see the path she still gripped it ‘til her knuckles went pale.

“It’s from the king’s hall.  Surely an Irishwoman knows a harp when she hears one.  They play them all over in Dublin.” 

“I just thought your people were … incapable of music.  After the boat. But this is almost good.”

She sounded delighted.  Happy even. And Bredg thought of her singing and wondered if she could play as well.  He could imagine her clever, calloused fingers easily coaxing trills of beauty from the fine sinews of a harp, or her wide mouth puffing softly on the pipes, so it mimicked the clarity of her own voice.

“Ah, well, that was Gerogi.  He was only supposed to beat the time for the rowers to row by, but someone once told him that he had a voice like a bird.  Sadly, they didn’t tell him it was a raven and now he treats us all to his talent every voyage.”

She snorted softly, “Why does no one tell him?”

“We have,” he found himself leaning down, to whisper to her, though there was no one about to hear them, “he just thinks we’re all jealous that his throat was touched by Bragi.”  He could see her hair stir from his breath, and she smelled of clean skin and rosemary. Not a sweet smell, but a reviving one, a good one.

“I don’t know who your man Bragi is, but he must have squeezed your Gerogi’s neck damned hard to leave him sounding like that.”

Now he laughed and startled by the sound like a nervous hare, she jumped and then laughed as well.  He would have given his home, his favorite horse, his chests of treasure, to take it back, that laugh between them.  But there it was and it could not be undone. She was now not just his slave, not just Loki’s sacrifice, she was the girl he laughed with on a dark road on a clear night with too many stars and she would always be so.

He pushed the doors wide, announcing his presence with grand action.  

His father’s mead hall was not quite so grand or vast as Heriot, but nor was it cursed.  Hvítrhöll was still massive, with great benches, and a giant pit of glowing coals where meat had roasted so the king might share his fortune with his warriors.  Servants - those of strong arm and nimble foot - carried high trays of laden with boar and lamb. Others, mostly children, able to dart through the roaring crowd like minnows in a pond, carried pitchers of the finest mead and ale from guest to guest, pouring so that no one would ever see the bottom of their cup.

It was hot, for eve with such a compression of bodies and the fires lit, with torches burning in every dark place, and with mildness of the summer outside, everyone was dressed in their finest, for when they might stand a boast before the king.  And the finest meant wool, and layers of linen, cloaks lined with fox and wolf pelts, velvets embroidered with thick bands of knotwork. Felted hats and heavy boots. All dyed to be like jewels, for the long winters of white days and black nights made the Norse long for color.

All of which gave the men and women a great, driving thirst, that they quenched with gusto and regularity.

Bredg cut through the susurrus of the crowd and even drowned out the harp and fife with his words, “Apologies, Father,” he walked forward, not choosing to notice if the girl followed, “Mother,” he called out, spreading his arms and smiling.  The mead-drinkers, servers, and those who waited for a chance to speak all parted for him the way a sapling splits for the axe. “I had hoped to be here before your scop’s performance began to share with you the treasure that I have stolen from the Irish this time.”

He turned and gestured to the woman.

She had taken a horn cup from one of the aghast servers and was just taking a deep drink when she noticed everyone staring at her.  By Hel’s Father she was bolder than a starving she-wolf. His nose twitched as he forced a laugh back when she let the mead back dribble within the vessel and sidled towards him to hiss, “What?” in his ear as if they were not the center of all attention.

His favorite place to be.

In Latin he answered, “I wish you to sing,” in a tone of sweetest reason.

Great-eyed and uncertain she spoke again, “What?”

“You have a tongue that runs with vinegar when you speak and honey when you sing.  My people love honey. Sing for me before my father well and I will reward you for it.”

“With what?” her eyes were now back to tiny and her mouth matched as he knew she trusted him less than good weather lasting.

“Oh, something.  A bottle of French wine let’s say.  But if you sing poorly I will punish you…“

She waited, arms crossed like a wife.

“I’ll make you teach Kjell to speak Irish.”

His father was making disgruntled noises but his mother, who’s Latin was better, laughed and leaned to her husband to share their words.

“No, no, not that… Alright,” she was suddenly fox-sly, “I know just the song.  It will be for you…”

“Anything will do,” he said, taking a seat at the end of a bench, the occupant of which barely had time to scramble out of the way.  

She poured out the mead on the already be-fouled floor and motioned for the servant to refill it.  Bredg nodded his permission. After drinking quick as a bird flew, the woman walked to the scop and held out her hand.  For a moment the old man looked askance, but he knew Irish and when she spoke a few words he handed it to her.

With one, drastic strum, she began - 

“Tá mé ag eitilt i do anraith   
Is mise an méaróg i do bhróga   
Is mise an bá faoi bhun do leaba   
Is mé an bump ar gach ceann   
Tá mé an craiceann ar a sleamhnán tú   
Is mise an bioráin i ngach cromán   
Is mise an scorn i do thaobh

  
Is eagla orm go gcoinníonn tú uaisle   
Is mise na scáileanna ar an mballa   
Is mise an arrachtaigh a thagann siad   
Is mise na hiascaí i do chroigeann   
Is mise an buileog i do chúl   
Cas breise ar an raca   
Is é mo chroí a chaithfidh tú   
Tosaíonn pian statach go tobann

  
Faigheann sé chomh uaigneach a bheith olc   
Cad a dhéanfainn chun aoibh gháire a fheiceáil   
Fiú le tamall beag   
Agus is breá le duine ar bith leat nuair a bhíonn tú olc   
Tá mé ag luí trí mo chuid fiacla!   
Is é do deora an t-aon chuideachta a theastaíonn uaim!”

 

It was easy to tell who spoke any Irish at all and did not by the either shock of those who feared him and the amusement of the few who did not.  His mother laughed so hard that she could no longer translate for the king after the first few lines. Bredg saw the Queen’s cool blue eyes grow unhappy even as she laughed, she perhaps saw more than she wished of why Loki might want this one. 

She motioned him forward and as he passed the woman, handing back the harp and ignoring the foot stomping and the shouts for more, he told her to go to the back of the hall and let them feed her and give her more mead.

“I want that bottle.  It’s too cold here at night, even in summer,” she told him, as though she were a free woman and could make demands of him.

 

Noirin seated herself at the far back of the hall where the platters of food and pitchers of drink that had been passed already waited and the slaves could help themselves.  They all looked at her as if they wanted to tell her to leave it to them, but she pretended they weren’t there as she took a few bits of goat and leathern jack that she overfilled from several near empty vessels.  

The King’s honey wine was far better than what she’s had before.  Almost good.

A large figure, cloaked and covered like a leper, shuffled its way into the back of the hall.  If the other slaves were unhappy with her, they seemed terrified of it. In a few moments all of them had fled for the rest of the hall.  Those attending the fete who stood to the back saw him and found their way forward, leaving an empty gap before them.

“So, they like both of us about as much as the plague, then,” she said, pushing a platter of sheeps’ faces down to where he could reach.  After a moment, she added, “Hoping that in your case that’s not literally true.”

A hand came out from beneath the heavy, faded red cloak, and grabbed at the meat.  It was a huge hand, calloused and sinewed, with an arm to match, lightly scarred, but slightly withered, as if he had eaten little of late. But still a warrior’s hand and arm.  In the shadow of his head cover there was a flash of teeth as he took a bite and worried at the roasted flesh.

“You’re clearly a healthy lad, then,” she said, “so I have no fear of catching the crud from you.  And if these fuckers dislike you then I’ll be your friend.”

“No one likes me anymore…” said a deep, shaking voice in perfect Irish, marred only by his Norse accent.

She nearly choked on the bit of bread she’d just taken and then nearly had a rib break as the great clod hit her back till it no doubt turned purple and she’d spit the offending bite to the floor.

“You’re my friend now, so don’t die,” he whispered close, in a child’s voice.  She could see his face - handsome once, and bearded and with large scared eyes and trembling mouth, all too thin, with sunken cheeks and a wasted mouth.

“Don’t they feed you?”  She pushed a cheese into his hand.

Around the mouthful of curds he said, “I forget to eat, sometimes.  And drink. And bathe. And who people are… sometimes…”

He had grabbed her rather hard.  The poor fellow was damned strong, wasted or no.  “It is no illness of my body. It is of my …” he fought for the word and then gestured with the side of his hand to his head.  “...my wits are in and out of favor with the gods.” Then his voice dropped to a growl, for a moment no longer childish, “With a god.”

His eyes glared at nothing, and then his smile was soft and he hummed the song she had sung too loudly, forgetting his anger and himself in that quick moment.

Oh, but the poor man!  

“Ah, well then, so you’re a little mad.  There are worse things in this life. Hunger.  That’s bad. Having to sleep in the rough for want of a home.  Being bound to a man who- never mind. One of our best kings in Ireland was cursed and went mad, too.”

“Cursed?” the poor fellow grabbed her hands too tightly, but she stopped herself from jerking them away, feeling there was no harm in him.  “Why was he cursed?”

“He killed a man of God.   _ The _ God, The God of Christ, not one of our gods.  He ran mad amongst the birds and in the forest, which is not so good.  But he became a poet, too. In Ireland it’s better to be a poet than a king.  Everyone loves a good song but no one likes to be told what to do.”

The fellow looked at her for a second, shocked, and then laughed loud enough to startle some of the people in the hall.  He quickly pulled the shawl over his face and grabbed her hand, pulling her all of the way to the back wall. “Were they good?”

“Were what good?” Noirin asked, shaking out her hand.

“The poems.  Maybe I could write poems.  I know my brother could, his words are clever and wise, so mayhap I could, I could, I could…”  His thoughts started to wander, his word pouring forth like mere wind that made sound but no sense, and he stood and began to walk in a circle.

Noirin quickly got before him, “Here, tell me your own self,” she said, and then started to sing -

“... Fuaimniú uisce mar féar fliuch  
A ghaoth mar sin kee,  
A brooklime ard, a sciathán uisce  
An glas is gile  
  
Is breá liom an crann eibhinn ársa,  
An sallow pale-leafed,  
Is é an beinn a dúirt séis,  
An sollúnta.”

(“…. Water flashing like wet grass

Its wind so kee, 

Its tall brooklime, its watercress

The greenest green

 

I love the ancient ivy tree,

The pale-leafed sallow, 

The birch’s whispered melody,

The solemn yew.”)

 

When she finished there was a silence about them, not just from the poor soul who had stopped all speech and motion to listen, but from everyone about them.  She could see that one, having finished his business with that woman, moving through the crowd like a salmon against the wave. 

“It is a good poem.  You sound as sweet as a nightingale.  I will write songs and you will sing them and then no one will care that I am mad.”

“In Ireland, maybe,” she said, uncomfortable with the silent attention from the crowd, most of whom seemed to not understand what they were saying at least.  

Then that one arrived.  He ignored her and took the other man’s arm with a gentleness that seemed strange for him, for this place, speaking to him in their language.  The big fellow nodded, too fast, his hands twitching, and let himself be led away.

“Wait here for me,  _ auðr _ , then we’ll be off.”

“You’re already off,” she muttered as he took the other man away.

 

Bredg was surprised at how quiet Soren was the whole walk back to their mother’s home.  Normally he would have stopped to talk wildly on every subject, if not to rave or run away, but he seemed calm.  

Thoughtful.

More so than he ever had before he was afflicted.  Soren was one for action and never one for thought.

When they reached the  Queen’s home all was in an uproar as the servants and slaves ran about and yelled blame at each other for losing their cursed jarl.  Bredg sent Soren to the quiet room that had been made for him and then set about stripping the skin from all of them with his tongue.  When they were a mass of snivelling and misery he went to see to his brother himself.

Was it so hard to keep one man from wandering away in the night where his lack of wits made him helpless?  He shuddered to think what could have happened. He’d heard a wolf howl the night before … and five more answer.  

Too close.  There may have to be a hunt.

Soren had managed to undress himself and was sitting naked by the small fire.  At least he had not tossed his boots into the hearth this time.

“You should go to bed, brother,” Bredg said, pouring them each a glass of weak ale from the pitcher that was warming on the mantle.  He missed his brother. He missed his boasting ways and grand laugh. If things were as they should be they would be the ones hunting the wolves that came too close to the town.  But until the Volva finished her meditations and prayers and found out where it was that Loki would have him take the woman to be killed, he must continue on without his first friend.

For a moment, in the dim firelight, Soren seemed nearly to be Soren.

“Soon, soon enough to bed. I am forever in bed and always alone there!  I am thinking of that girl’s song and that king that went mad. I like Noirin, brother.  It’s time you found a bride after all that happened with Liv.”

Thorn-sharp pain prodded Bredg’s chest.  Soren sounded so much himself. “Who’s this Noirin you’d have me marry?  She’d best have a good dowery.” 

Noirin.  What a strange name, but like honey in his mouth.  He wondered if she were real or some phantom conjured from his brother’s broken thoughts.

Soren laughed and clapped his shoulder with a shadow of the strength that used to be in that great hand, “I never understand your humor.  Your bald Irish nightingale. Set the date for a year so she might have enough hair to unbraid when you take her to your bed.” He stood, almost straight.  “I’m for sleep,” he said, tucking himself in and turning towards the wall.

Noirin.

He had heard her name.  It was like the sound of crystal touching crystal.

Noirin.

He had spoken her name and it tasted sweet.

He looked at the fire that danced and mocked him.  He knew his god was pleased at this new mischief. The woman had a name now and it was one he longed to say.  It fairly pushed at his lips to escape. “Noirin,” he whispered to the fire and it let upwards into the flue, the wood below snapping and popping like a cruel laugh.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I have only found a few songs from near this period in Irish or Norse that I can translate I have decided to judiciously use parts of a few songs from my Loki playlist for the rest of this story. Translated into Irish, just because. 
> 
> The song/poem that Noirin sings to Soren is from Seamus Heaney's translation of an epic poem from this time about, as she said, an Irish king who was struck mad for killing a Christian priest, albeit b mistake. Mad Sweeney is a classic figure in Irish folk lore and may have been real.
> 
> The song she sang for everyone else translates as -  
> I'm the fly in your soup  
> I'm the pebble in your shoes  
> I'm the pea beneath your bed  
> I'm the bump on every head  
> I'm the peel on which you slip  
> I'm the pin in every hip  
> I'm the thorn in your side  
> Makes you wiggle and writhe
> 
> I'm the fear that keeps you awake  
> I'm the shadows on the wall  
> I'm the monsters they become  
> I'm the nightmares in your skull  
> I'm the dagger in your back  
> An extra turn upon the rack  
> I'm the quivering of your heart  
> A static pain a sudden start  
> It gets so lonely being evil  
> What i'd do to see a smile  
> Even for a little while  
> And no one loves you when you when you're evil  
> I'm lying through my teeth!  
> Your tears are the only company i need!


	6. On the Dark Sea of the Night We Make Many Journeys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bredg and Noirin go back to his stead.

Bredg sat by his mother’s fire for a time, listening to the fire and the heavy sleep of Soren who was normally worried at by night hags as he tried to rest, but now snored with exhausted peacefulness.  The woman’s voice had soothed him as nothing had in the months of misery and dread that had eaten their family’s heart.

Noirin’s voice.

When one of his mother’s servants offered him a cup of spiced ale he took it, drank it to the dregs and then motioned for another.

When he returned to his father’s gleaming hall the crowd had dwindled and the lights were lower as extra candles were extinguished to allow those who stayed to speak with the illusion of privacy or sneak kisses and caresses in peace.  The king was gone, probably seeking his own bed as the condition of his eldest had aged him more than the passing years had done. His mother was speaking with Thorvald, and motioned for him to join them.

He knew the topic.  He could not face it now.  Not with his head filled with ale and with a name and his brother’s contented sleep.

For a moment he did not see …  _ her, _ but then he heard her voice, softly speaking Irish.  She was on the floor beside fire pit, which was now just glowing, gutting coals, laying propped on her arm.  The boy that Thorvald had taken in the raid was curled up leaning against her. They had taken a salt-cellar from one of the long benches, and had a small pile of kindling as well, twigs and twists of bark and the like.  In a private voice she was telling him a story about a saint, or maybe a goddess, of fire, which she punctuated now and then by either the salt or bits of wood into the pit, to make little, merrily colored flames, or brief infernos.

The boy would laugh, and then sometimes bury his face against her skirt when he couldn’t stop.  

Bredg tried to remember if he had ever seen Liv telling Kjell a story.  Or if she had ever made either of them laugh. He knew she had not. Liv was not one for thinking of others happiness, she was too involved in her own.  

“Are we going, then?”  _ she _ asked without looking up at him.

He must have drunk more than he thought, for he could not recall having taking the steps that brought him to her.  “Yes, if your story is done.”

Her head cocked like the hound she thought he thought her to be, an eyebrow cocked with confusion that he might be thoughtful, then her mouth thinned, “Ah, you’re drunk, then.  It’s not the kind of story that has an end,” she said, standing up, scooping the boy with her. He was a small lad for his age and she carried him easily to Thorvald, her long skirts swishing across the flagstones.  

Whilst she was depositing the boy, the queen looked over her head at Bredg, the line of frown clear between her eyes.  For once he ignored her.

He was watching  _ her _ smile a bit at Thorvald as she said goodbye to the boy.

In the dark, the moon now silvering the rough path to his home, they walked side by side rather than with her behind holding his belt.  When they were out of sight of the town, but not yet in sight of his stead, he stopped.

“If you favor Thorvald I … you can go to his bed if you like.  His woman and he both take lovers without angering each other. It’s their way.”  Forcing the words out jolted lightning through his veins and prickled his skin, leaving him half way to sober.  Then, with a snort, “I had forgotten. You’re a Christian girl, aren’t you? The only man you go on your knees for is a priest, isn’t it?”

“The big one?” she snorted back.  “I spent enough time tending cattle for the holy sisters, thank you.  It’s just good that he’s kind to Donal. The little fella came to us with bruises on his face begging in his mother's place more than once.  Or more than ten times.  He’d be better with that bear than he was with her.  At least he’s fed and clothed.  And laughing."

“Thorvald and Elka have a steading full of ‘slaves’ that are all children that run wild and do less work than any lambkin in spring,” he answered.

“And I might have been with the holy sisters, but I wasn’t one of them.  My bed has been filled by more than naughty dreams a time or two. Of course the dreams were usually less disappointed,” she added with a bit of wistfulness, the darkness giving the illusion that what would be said there would be forgotten in daylight.

Bredg’s cock was suddenly hard to aching.  The skin seemed to want to split and all he could think was that he wanted her to whisper with that sweet, husky voice of her’s about those dreams.  Then he would make them real. 

With a bit of discomfort he started walking again.  Too quickly. As if he could escape her even though he knew she was going with him.

“So you let your slaves take lovers, do you?” she asked, scrambling to catch up.  He saw that she was shivering a bit. It was a strangely cold night for summer.

He didn’t answer.  He kept his head down and willing his head the rest of the way clear.

“Kjell will be happy, once his chin hairs come in,” she added.

“Kjell is not a slave, he was my wife’s son, when I had a wife.”

“Ah.  Um, so my condolence, then.”

“For what?”

“Your loss.  Was this her gown?”  Bredg knew what she thought but did not correct her, telling himself it was none of her business and what she knew or did not know wouldn’t matter soon, as it would all be gone with her life.  He told himself that again and then once more.

“Her best.  Her favorite, anyway.”

From the side of his eye he could see her looking down, gently stroking the fabric.  “Thank you. For letting me have it for when went to the hall.”

“There’s a whole trunk of her things.  You can have them all if you like.” Though suddenly the sight of her wearing Liv’s dress, pretty though it may be, seemed wrong.  The color. The smell of it - lavender and honey, were too sweet for her. Noirin was prickly rosemary and warm, spicy nutmeg that had been freshly grated.

“I hope there’s a cloak.  I could use it tonight if I’m not to shake myself awake all night long.”

They walked in silence the rest of the way, but he looked at her from time to time.  

When they reached his home he saw that Kjell must have gone to sleep before it had grown so cold and had not lit the fire.  Why was it so cold? If it stayed like this they would have to raid again to ensure they had enough grain for the winter.

Bredg started to remove his cloak to hand it to her, thinking it was too late to be crawling in the blackness of the loft for Liv’s old belongings, and then found his words working before his thoughts could stop them.

“You can sleep with me, it’s too cold for the floor.”

Noirin’s eyes grew vast and strangely black in the thin light given by the few candles that were lit.  “What?”

 

Had that one told her that she could shave his head and knit herself a proper wig of his deeply beloved, crow's feather hair it would have been only a bit less of a shock than his offer.  

No.

His order.

“Or don’t.  If you prefer the cold and the floor that is for you to decide,” he took off his heavy cloak and handed it to her.  “This might help.”

Then, without another word he took himself to the alcove where his bed was tucked and started to strip.  She sat on the edge of a bench, barely perched there as if she might fly away if startled. Though how much more startled could she be?  

The cloak was warm from his body and smelled of pine and his clean skin, and Noirin found her clutching it to her body.  He was naked now and looked at her, eyes meeting, and his face without expression, neither that nasty grin he gave her, nor that cool appraisal that judged her most of the time.  His face was blank. 

There was a bowl of water that he kept beside his bed for washing down every night.  He took a rough cloth and ran it over his face, then his chest, his arms, his long, thick, beautiful, hard cock.  Still meeting her eyes.

By Saint Dymphna the man must have lost his wits somewhere on the road in the dark.  Or left them at the bottom of a wine jug, more the like.

But, did she care?  

He was as lovely as an angel, were angels real.  As lovely and as strong as the angel Michael himself, but nothing like so holy.  Indeed, with the drops of water finding their lazy way down his chest, his long fingers, his phallus, he was the very image of most the sins that the Prioress had forever and uselessly told Noirin to pray to be strong in the face of.

Lust, certainly.  Gluttony, for she practically wanted to eat him alive.  Sloth, for wouldn’t it be lovely to laze a full day away in a bed with that?  Greed spoke for itself, as she felt her cunt clench softly at the very sight. Pride that he might want her, too, after seeing so many sets of hungry eyes on him in the King’s hall.  Even envy for those luck drops of water that were able to stroke his pale skin.

Wrath, of course, she had felt for ages.  But not tonight. Tonight her muscles had finally gone soft as she had felt so much of the rage that had kept her sore and tired and sleepless eke away from her like poison leached by salt.

He started to open his mouth.  Afraid of what he might say, that might be cruel, that might be cold, that might ruin it, she stood and took two steps and stood upon her toes to push her mouth against his, forcing sweetness in the place of the meanness she fear would pour forth. 

One hand spread over her back, pushing her to him, scorching hot through the linen gown as if it could burn it from her body, the other was in her shortened hair - how horrible it must look - finding just enough to grip, as if he feared she would pull away from him.  Her hands slid over his wet skin, feeling the hardness of his arms, his chest, his wide shoulder, whimpering pitifully into his mouth. 

_ Críosta milis _ , but how long had she wanted him?  Sure it was every minute from the moment he pulled her from the sea, if not before.  When he had pressed her to the earth, his hot voice deep in her ear, and offered to spare her girls in return for her freedom.  Her body and her mind had never been the best of friends, and she knew now that from that moment they’d been at war.

He kissed with no quarter or haste.  It was luscious and slow, his tongue teasing and then stroking, his thin lips sucking and working tenderly over hers, all of the while pushing his leg firmly between hers.  When she was straddled helplessly on his thigh he used that firm grip on her back to rock her back and forth until her sodden sex had soaked through her skirts and she found herself babbling, not quite begging, but near enough for humiliation.

He spoke into her mouth, their lips all but touching, “Don’t worry,  _ auðr _ , I’ll take care of you,” before she could grow angry at his calling her ‘dog’ again, in a quick motion he had let her go and grabbed the pretty dress she wore and tore it from neck to hem, stopping only when he reached the thick band of embroidery that would not part even for his strength.

She shrieked jumping back, “Are you daft?  This is worth-”

He picked her up from the wreckage of linen, holding her high in his arms and pressed his mouth in open, greedy kissed on her throat, “You smell so fucking good,” he muttered, inhaling against her skin.  Then he dropped her with another startled sound, onto his massive bed. The ropes groaned and swayed, but then settled. 

When he dropped to his knees beside the bed and pulled her legs open she had no time to consider what he did before he kissed and smelled her there as well.  “Even better…” he groaned.

Just as tender as the kiss upon her mouth was his kiss upon her womanhood, even as he pulled her legs over his shoulders and his finger dug into her hips leaving pain that she knew would bloom into bruises.  That bit of pain kept her from fully going mad as he teased her pearl with the very tip of his tongue until she dug her heels into the wings of his back and pushed up, hoping for more. More of everything. 

She swore at him in Irish, then in Latin, then she begged in the bit of Frankish she knew.  

He ignored her in every language and she wished she knew more of the silly one that he spoke at home, knowing that even in that tongue he would be a cruel bastard keeping her wound up and never letting her go.

By the time he started taking small, wide tongued laps on her slit she was exhausted and her skin was so delicate that when he put a hand over her belly and pushed down with one hand while he fucked into her with the other she writhed and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

“Do you need to come, my  _ auðr,  _ my headstrong, long-legged, sharp-tongued, intoxicating problem?  Do you want me to have mercy on this precious  _ steinn  _ and make you scream?”

“You talk too much,” she moaned at him.  “Yes. For mercy sake, yes…”

She felt his smile, all teeth and wickedness, against her most sensitive place, “My bed is the wrong place to seek mercy, but just this once,” his fingers spread within her, one of them stroking down on a place that made her mad even as he softly wrapped his lips about her painfully needy nub and sucked once, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to pull her back from the bed, hard enough to make her forget all things but the hard wave of pleasure that convulsed around his touch even as her legs wrapped about his head, seeking more.

Now, he reached under her and grabbed her ass to pull her up, his mouth no longer clever.  Now he was the raider she knew him to be. The greedy Northman who took and took and took - though some part of her mind wondered what he was taking even as he gave her another peak and another, until the mercy she cried for was  _ from _ the pleasure.

When, shaking himself, he finally let her go, Noirin barely felt it as he tucked her into his bed, pulling the covers over her as she began to shiver again, and brushed her shorn hair back from her eyes.  

Or had it been a kiss upon her forehead?  She wondered, fading.

No.  It couldn’t be that.  

Through the night’s dark, made darker by the bed curtains pulled about them, Noirin would feel herself woken by Bredg, but now in perfect silence.  From time to time she would hear him inhale as if to speak and then nothing would be said. But he would instead touch her - her breasts, her back, her arms, her legs, everywhere, with hand and mouth.  

Never with his pretty cock.  Even though she thought, blushing, that she may have begged him for it at least once.  Or twice. Surely no more than three times.

Time and again in that dark quiet, with the cold shut out, he would bring her back to arousal, to pleasure, to her peak, and then would shush her and hold her against him until she slept.  So exhausted was she that she did not feel it when he left the bed as dawn moved towards them.

 

Bredg stepped from his house.  It was damp and cold and not even that shock could ease the agony of his furious cock.  “You don’t get that,” he told it, sternly. “Make do with this and be happy for it,” he said, wrapping a hand about himself.

His skin smelled strongly of her sex and of his own frustration.  Walking around to the side of his house away from the byre should Kjall wake early, Breg  leaned back on the smooth, well-hewn wood and closed his eyes.  By the Most-Cunning God, but she'd been magnificent.  Everything he had fantasized in a bed mate.  He stroked idly, recalling every noise and helpless motion of her, every way she had touched him and the way her mouth moved under his, the way her body arched and strained towards her end.  Shameless and eager and hot and ready and tender and sweet and fierce and wanting and too easy to love…

Noirin.

He bit his lips hard enough to mark, to keep from calling her name as he came in great spurts that fell onto the dark earth.

Bredg watched the sun climb from about the mountains and knew himself to be well and truly fuckered.

 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saint Dymphna is an Irish saint from the 7th century, the patron saint of the mentally ill.
> 
> Críosta milis means 'sweet Christ'
> 
> steinn is a Norwegian word meaning 'stone' but in Old Norse it meant both cave and was slang for a precious gem.


	7. No Matter How Sweet the Night, Morning Arrives and the Day Follows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the night before.

Noirin woke alone. 

That was not unexpected, but the comfort of it was.  She lay not on the ground but on a mattress that swayed lightly on its ropes as she shifted and stretched, her body relaxed with pleasure and warmth.  

Could the tick be filled with feathers?  Even the monks in Lindisfarne did not have anything so luxurious.  Like something had by the Romans of old, it was.

Then she remembered whose bed it was.  And what they had done before - no, what that one had done to her, over and over as she moaned, pleading for his cock - and she felt a blush burn across her body, so bright and hot that she expected to set the blankets and curtains a-fire at her touch.  

Why had he not… 

She had begged and the shame of the memory of his ignoring her, laughing at the sound of her craving what he wouldn’t give her.

Why had he not?  Was she so unworthy, a whorish little slave to be won over and pacified by his bed games but not good enough for him to dirty his precious manhood in?  Her skin cooled as an icy sense of offence grew from her liver outward as she thought of why he would do such a thing.

The cheap bastard!

The cloak he had given her the night before lay in pile where she had dropped it in her eagerness to stop his lying mouth.  Noirin pulled it about her shoulders and gathered the old, worn comb he had given her, and the frayed toothpick and salt to clean her teeth with and left the house.  

Bredg - no,  _ that one _ , said an angry voice within her - was returning from bathing, his skin bright pink from the wash.  He was dressed only in black linen trews that were damp and outlined ever long, unshared inch of him, on seeing her he pulled on a caftan, leaving the hasps unhooked so it hung open.  His long, bony feet were bare and something in that made him seem … vulnerable. 

Noirin was surprised that when it was wet his normally strictly braided hair had curls as sweet as on any babe.  

“Are yo-”

Noirin did not want to hear his voice.  Not so soon after the things he had said in the darkness and the way he had kept himself from her.  

 

In the thin light of morning, watching her  -  _ Noirin, _ a soft voice within him corrected - stride long-legged and fast towards him, wrapped in his cloak that would now smell of her as even his bed did, Bredg’s cock ached.

So did the hollow place behind his breastbone, save that this morning it felt full.  

_ He _ had smelled of her as well.  After relieving himself, for relief was all it had been, not true pleasure, he had gone hard again smelling her on his hands, tasting her on his lips, and it was all he could do not to return the his bed and wake her yet again.  But he knew he would not be able to resist taking her fully so instead he had ruthlessly scrubbed himself until Noirin was gone from his flesh if not his mind.

And it did him no good, for looking at her there, pale and naked and wrapped in fur and wool, her deep brown eyes large and her expression unreadable, like an erotic apparition from a dream he could not remember having.  The sight of her rough, work-fit hand holding his cloak closed made him go gut-clenchingly hard.

Before he could ask her if she was well, the girl handsomely slung the edge of his cloak over her shoulder and said in a scolding voice as she passed him by without stopping, “Don’t think that fancy business last night gets you out of giving me that Frankish wine I was promised.  I’ll have the bottle today, then. I’m for a wash.”

Bredg watched her go, feeling as if he’d taken a quick punch from a hard fist in against his lungs.  He’d not had any expectations of how she would act, of how he would act, because he had not used his brain for a flat second since they’d reached the house last night, but even so it was a shock.

She seemed angry.  

After he’d spent his hours pleasuring her instead of sleeping, and never pleased himself once whilst he was at her.  Mad, ungrateful little thing that she was!

He stomped to the house, yelling for Kjell to get the bread baking and that they would eat after they exercised the horses and set up the charcoal hut since they were running low.  And he reminded him that tomorrow was market day in town, so they needed to be up and fed all the earlier the next morning. 

He told Kjell to tell  _ her  _ about it, that she would be going as well since he did not trust her on her own not to do some foolish thing.  To run. Set fire to his things. Who could know what a madwoman might do if she was given her head and too much time alone?

But then, he thought as he stopped at the door, looking where Noirin had walked off to the bathing pool, she’d seemed something more than angry.  Something more than mad. 

He rubbed the place in the center of his chest, aching and hollow again.  

 

A great, russet hound, with long legs for running down the fastest prey, and a face full of whiskers and trouble trotted on Bredg’s land that afternoon when Noirin and Kjell were weeding a raised bed of vegetables.

It came towards them from across the great expanse that lead to the mountains, but was not a wild thing, for its shaggy coat was clean and gleamed like Rus amber under the bright sun, nor was he far travelled and paw sore based on his easy gait.  

Still, it came straight towards them, mouth open in a pleased and friendly smile and before either of them could start or stand it had plopped down against Noirin’s side, crushing a few cabbage.  With a huff of pleasure it placed it’s head in her lap and snuffled there contentedly, eyes closed in bliss.

Noirin tried to shove it’s head away, “You’re drooling on my tunic, you random cur!” she yelled, pushing his snout.  

The creature was as set as the earth and refused to move other than to eagerly lick her fingers, looking at her face, still doggily smiling and meeting her eyes in a way unlike any dog she had ever known.  It’s own eyes were as red as they were brown. She shoved again, this time at its shoulder and instead of moving it simply rolled upon it’s back, showing it’s red belly to the sky, head still in her lap and now it’s tongue lolled from it’s great mouth and it’s teeth gleamed as long and sharp as any wolf. 

Noirin was fond enough of dogs.  The Prioress had kept a pair of elegant hunting hounds that she took to retrieve her prey when she went birding, and they had always found Noirin a tenderhearted touch when whining for scraps beneath the table.  And there were any number of strays that wandered about the farms, sleeping in the sun and stealing food, and she wished them luck and felt a kinship, even. But there was something uncanny in the beast that she did not trust.  

Also, she saw the hound was clearly very, very much a male.

Kjell found the whole business hilarious and bent over with laughter.  He said chortled something at her, pointing to the dog’s massive cock that was waving red and ready in the air.  She needn't speak Norse to know that the boy was saying, “He likes you!”

“Stop laughing and call him off,” she said, tight toothed and angry, gesturing that even though he did not know her words he sure understood her meaning.  Normally Noirin would find it as funny as Kjell did. Maybe more so, but for some reason all she felt was wrong.

He managing to lift his head enough to ‘yopyopyop’ at her, gesturing back and shrugging.  He’d clearly never seen the beast before, either and had no more luck with it than she did.

Kjell was collapsing with laughter and Noirin now desperately trying to pull herself from under the hound’s head if she could not push it off.  It was too heavy, too heavy for any orderly animal, and her legs were pinned as if beneath a fallen tree. 

Noirin’s heart pounded with strength enough to make her gasp and prickly, painful sweat broke out over her body as she went wild, needing to be free of this … wrong thing.  “Get off! Get off! Get off!” she screamed over and over in Irish as she beat at the heavy furred dog, her arms flailing and her legs trembling hard enough. Her sight started to close in with black about the edges and thick, paining sobs worked their way out of her chest.

“ _ Hva skjer _ ?” came a deep shout from the direction of the house and then, from around the roaring sound of her humbling fear, Noirin heard the sound of swiftly running boots on hard ground and a clapping sound.   _ “Få!  Få! _ ” Bredg yelled at the dog as he ran towards them.  

It lifted it’s head lazily, as if amused and Noirin scrambled backwards, feet kicking, a whining noise coming from her that she could not stop.  Large hands took her under her arms and pulled her up, “What’s the matter? Are you bit?” His voice was harsh in her ear, and she felt him patting on her, looking for a wound.

Later, when she could think, she found that she could choose to mistake his tone for dread.  For concern. 

“It-, it-” she pointed, she gulped and tried again.  The hound was now climbing to its feet, an air of what could only be amusement around it.  “I was frightened.”

Bredg’s touch froze and for a brief moment she felt what seemed to be his forehead resting softly against the back to her head. Then he took a shuddering breath and turned her to face him.  His mouth was small, as were his eyes, every feature caught in a cynical frown. “You? Afraid?” Now he laughed, a laugh that sounded just like Kjell’s. “I’ve seen you face fire and the depths of the sea, and my mother, and you’re afraid of a doggy that just wants to hump your leg?  Even sheep are clever enough to only fear wolves.” 

Noirin was surprised to find her heart felt bee stung, like he was filling her with venom. Before she could say anything he stepped around her and clapped at the animal, “ _ Få, hundr! Få. _ ”

It looked at him, mouth now close, tail and ears flat, head forward, as if considering what his throat might taste like.  Then, with what could only be called a cheeky look at Noirin, it trotted past them, lifting it’s leg as it went, loosing an impressive and unbelievably stinking stream of urine onto Bredg’s boots.

Then, before even that one’s speed could stop him, with a flounce of his tail the hound was speeding away.  

With a shout of rage, Bredg ran after the creature that he had no possibility of catching.

Noirin shakily sat back down next to Kjell, whose attempt to stop laughing had been defeated by the hissing sound of the dog’s pissing.  When he finally stopped, holding himself in agony, he started to gather some cabbages for dinner. 

Not sure what else to do, she did as well.

Then she thought, and she pointed after the retreating dog.  “ _ Hundr? _ ” she asked.

Kjell nodded, rising to go in to start dinner, “J _ a, hundr.” _

Noirin nodded.  Hundr. Another word.

Then, she yelled after him in the Irish he didn’t know, “Then what the fuck is auðr?”  

There was no answer.

 

Around and about and over and under and through other fields and across streams He led the blind fool a merry chase.  

Sometimes, knowing that it would irk him beyond all measure, He stopped to let the panting man catch Him up a bit and then with a yip would run again.  Still, the fool was fleeter of foot and more graceful than any mortal He had known before. 

Of course he was.  He was beautiful and clever and ruthless, capable of anything, fast in thought and revenge.  

Still a fool. 

Eventually, as the darkling air gathered the sport grew dull.  Most things grew dull in time. Boring or at least inconstant. Almost all things and creatures were inconstant, He found.  All but one.

He lay down on a hillock and His red color blended against the soil and the fool finally gave up and went home to bathe and most like burn his favorite, most comfortable boots.

Served him right, interrupting His interlude with that delicious smelling little mortal.  Her long thigh under His head had been bliss. 

Raising with a shake He headed for a hut near the farthest edge of the settlement, where the forest started and the people burned their dead.  In the darkness, if anyone could see, it would be apparent that with each padding step He made sparks of fire come from the cool earth. 

Sparks fly upwards, always.

As they rose, He rose, paws turning to feet, fur shedding and burning away in the air, skin gleaming pale and untouched, limbs stretching, His hair tumbling in bright curls to the small of His long, naked back.  He looked at His hands.

No matter how often He shapeshifted He always found Himself staring for a moment at His elegant hands to be certain they were fully restored.  And always giving His magnificent phallus a fond tug to ensure all there was as it should be. 

Even though He knew that night and smoke covered Him, that in this world in His own body He was little more than a dream, Loki still dressed himself.  In velvet, in leather, in gold, and in precious stones. 

The vǫlva was deep in trance as she had been on and off for the days since the fool had brought the girl from Eire.  Periodically she would come out enough to drink water and add more poisonous but intoxicating herbs to the fire, to sip more of the tea she had brewed of rød fluesopp and juniper.  To dab more ashes upon her brow and under her eyes and upon her ears that she might think the thoughts that He sent to her, see the visions He gave her, and hear the words He spoke.

None of it was needed, of course, He would give her what she sought because it would give Him what He wanted, and the old woman was probably making herself sick doing the rituals, but Loki had always adored attention and ceremony in equal measure.  Anyone wanting to make a fuss in His honor was always welcome to do so, even though most of the time He would end up ignoring their petitions and prayers.

But in this case…

Unseen, He crouched gracefully unseen beside the incoherent witch, preening in the heat of power and fragrant worship that came from her frail, aged form, and whispered so close and soft into her ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rød fluesopp is our old friend fly agaric.


	8. In the Land of the Gods, In the Forgotten Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki remembers

Time had passed.  

It had been passing and passing and passing and passing.

It refused to stop.

Loki hated time.

Not because it had been created by mortals, or maybe other gods, or that one God that was so pushy or some of his Valkyries.  No. Angels. They were called angels and they were very damned stuffy and just the sort of things that would create something as utterly dreary and boring as time where everything was lined up in perfect order.

Order.

Loki hated order.

It made him itch.

Itching was worse than pain.  

When you had been tied to a jagged pile of rocks and left there with a viper spitting and drooling venom into your eyes and nose and mouth and only a tiny cup held by a hand that was covered in burns and weals and where the bone could be seen through a hole in the skin, You learned all there was to know about itching and pain.  

Sometimes He could see Her knobby, little wrist bone through her flesh and the poor little bone was scorched by poison, too.

When Her arm shook, if any of the venom splashed out it was caught by Her other hand, even more tormented, even more wounded.  One time it had been so eaten away that the poison had fallen through between the metacarpals and struck Him anyway.

Then She would heal.  And He would heal. The gods had made sure that They would heal and Their flesh would stay young and strong.  Because scars don’t hurt the way that clean, healthy flesh does. 

 

The first time He saw Her…

Damned time again…

Remembering…  Because of time you remembered and because of remembering things hurt inside as well as out and Loki hated remembering…

 

“Loki!”  

Þórr’s voice.  No, let’s call him ‘Thor’ Loki thought to Himself as He spoke to Himself in that time and the Himself in that time flicked a hand to His ear to chase away that creaking voice that had to be from the future.  And then wondered if He was remembering that He had talked to Himself or had that only happened now that He was doing it?

The thought spun and spun and grew tight in His head and He thought to ask Her but Her eyes were closed and He wondered what She was thinking of.

But, yes, fine, Thor’s voice was strident and loud as he crossed the great plain that was peaceful and safe within the golden walls of Asgard  (‘You are welcome, Aesir,’ He thought), walking towards Him, a large stone bottle of wine in one hand and two golden flagons in the other.

The God of Thunder hated to drink alone.

Normally at a moment like this Loki would hate the interruption, but a bottle and two glasses could make even an enemy welcome, and Thor was different than most of the other gods in that he was only sporadically an enemy and at the moment they were on good terms.

“How is my favorite nephew?” Loki asked, standing up from where He had crouched to pick up a silver ball that had rolled across the grasses to bump His boot.

Thor tilted his fuzzy faced, fuzzy head, that was filled with fuzz as far as Loki could tell and frowned, “You are not my uncle merely because You are Father’s blood brother.”

“I’m better,” He said, slapping Thor’s beefy shoulder and taking the bottle from his hand, “I’m better because a biological uncle  _ has _ to love you, where as I do so by choice.”

“Biological?”  Thor held out the flagons to be filled, confused again.

The wine was not local, but dark and red and smelling of berries and oak trees.  Must be from Odin’s stash. “Sorry, we don’t have that word yet, do we?” Loki tossed the ball one handed.up and down and up and down as He drank deep.  The little clutch of pretty goddesses whose play had stopped when they lost their toy were all staring over at Him anxiously, all in a little pack, whispering to each other.  Only one of them didn’t look too nervous. 

She looked more hungry, and He admired her blonde hair falling in curves that mimicked her body beneath her dress.

The others had that nervousness that came from seeing something you wanted that was probably bad for you.  But you still wanted it  _ so _ badly. 

They all knew about Him.  He was part of their nightmares and those other dreams as well.  The ones that they clutched in secret when they woke up riding the pleasure with a bundle of blankets pushed up between their legs.

He crouched down again, rolling the ball back and forth from His free hand to the back of the one holding His wine and crooned softly, willing the wind to carry a hint of His voice to the gaggle of Aesir.

“Come play with Me, kittens. I see your ears pricking up and your whiskers twitching.  Come and bat your toy around with your cute paws and roll over and let Me rub your soft bellies and make you purrrrrr...”

“What are You doing?” Thor asked, grabbing the back of Loki’s tunic to pull Him to His feet.  

“I’m trying to pick a wife, if you must know,” He answered, shrugging the Thunderer off.  

“What?”  Thor almost spit out a mouthful of the stolen wine but managed to swallow it with a hacking cough.

Sighing, “Your AllFather has decided that to ‘normalize’ me with the Aesir I need to take an Asgardian bride.  I considered Freya-”

“Who hates you and is already married.”

“And fucks for jewelry.  I mean fucking for real estate or hard cash is one thing, but jewelry, no, that’s so cheap.  But that got me thinking about Idunn and that sweet orchard of hers. It would be nice to have a wife who all of the Aesir owed something to.  I mean, you all owe Me, too, but somehow you always seem to forget that.”

Typically, Thor ignored that last bit, “She’s also married, even though she at least doesn’t hate You.  She doesn’t hate anyone.”

“Sif,” He said, holding out an empty cup.

Thor growled but filled it anyway, “Hates You even more than Freya does because of her hair, and is married to  _ me _ !”

“I said it was a thought.  She’s really quite attractive, you should be flattered I considered her.  My standards are terrifyingly high. Anyway, since all of the goddesses of note either hate me or are married or both I decided to look a bit farther afield.  There are always a few spare deities around here, even if they aren’t…  _ significant _ they are all very adorable and probably would be honored, and docile, if taken into the home of the God of … well, you know, so many things.  And they are all blondes so they will match my other two wives nicely.”

Thor cocked his head in a gesture that seemed to diminish his IQ and made Loki want to scratch behind his ears.

(Or would diminish it if IQs existed yet.  Loki really hated time.)

“I thought you told Odin that Glut and you had divorced and that Angrboda was just something called a ‘baby mama’?”

“Oh, I lied about-”

He broke off, noticing that the goddess posse were motioning for another female who was walking by to come over to them.  He could not hear what they said, but in a few moments the newcomer was walking across the field towards them, straight and tall and staring at Him the whole long way.

“Can I have their ball?”  

“Now, who are You?”

She had hair black as Odin’s crows wings and eyes as green as maple leaves in high summer when the trees were fat with sugar and about to burst with sweetness,and She had a proud nose and a stubborn chin He thought would be fun to bite and She lifted a brow at Him, “The one asking for the ball.”  She put out Her hand, long-fingered and soft palmed and Loki saw it burned and dirty and holding a tiny cup…

No.  Not yet.  He pushed back on the memory and made it return as if He were there on the field, drinking wine, Thor beside Him, smirking at something, and She was waiting for the ball.  

“I didn’t see You playing with them,” He said, still tossing the ball one handed, up and down, up and down.

“I wasn’t,” She reached out to snatch the toy, and He easily stepped back out of Her reach.  “Just give it to Me. They’re all scared of You.” She met His eyes and He knew that the flames within them were bright and His brow was dark, but She did not look away.  Instead She gave Him a soft smile.

“And You aren’t?”  How odd. 

“No.”

“Why?”

She shrugged, “Because I’ve been beneath Your notice.  You’ve never noticed Me before, at any rate.”

For once, Loki had nothing to say.  Instead He threw the toy far across the field where it flew over the head of the goddesses and they ran like lambs after it, bleating and their rumps going up and down and for the first time He did not bother to watch.  “I have never seen You before.”

“Oh, I know, but I’ve been here.  I’ve seen You.” 

She walked away with a twitch of Her black, black braid and not a look back and Thor, for whatever reason idiots do what they do, laughed and laughed and laughed when he looked at Loki’s face.

“And now I’ve seen You,” He spoke to Thor without turning away from the sight of Her straight, straight retreating back.  “Who was  _ that _ ?”

“Sigyn.  She’s the Goddess of … I don’t remember.  Something good. Something people want.”

“Does She hate me?”

Thor thought for a moment.  “Not yet?” He sounded doubtful.

“Is she married?”

“Not yet.”  He sounded certain.  And poured them both another cup.

 

Loki’s house was four sided and all of windows, so He could see the gods when they came for Him, as He knew they would one day for no one could be trusted, even though Their king had sworn brotherhood to Him.  But that day was not today, nor for many more todays, for back then Loki tried to pretend there was no time and all days were one day and one night and it went on and on and any trick He played could be fixed before that day changed.

On that day that was all days three of the goddesses were sleeping curled up in a pile at the foot of His bed as He lay propped against the headboard, a pair of spectacles that He did not need and did not exist yet in this world on the end of His nose as He read  _ Mysterier  _ by Knut Hamsun, which had either been written more than a hundred years before or would not be written for nearly a millennium.

Either way, it was a good book.

He tried to pretend He was sated - for the moment - by the exercise He had given the those frolicky little kittens but in truth agitation worked at Him and the ends of His red curls sparked and spat and left pinhole burns in the linen and silks covering His bed.  

Leaving the clowder of sleeping goddesses to wake and find their own ways home, Loki left His house. 

He searched through Asgard, in the houses of His friends and enemies, bringing gifts to make Himself welcome.  The houses were filled with gods and goddesses, children and hunting hounds, slaves and cattle, rare and precious things and all manner of relics, jewels, and the booty of a thousand times a thousand raids into the various lands of the Jotunns and the misty country of the trolls.  

Loki kept no such things, which was why His house was His house and not His home and He had no locks upon His doors or bars upon His gates or guards outside His walls.  He felt freer, knowing He could spring forth and run for the hills or dive into the sea without a backward glance. He felt freer knowing that there was nothing that could be taken from Him even if an army of invaders came through.  Life was easier that way.

Finally, having worn out His welcome in the homes of the gods, He went to the depths of the Iron Forest where Angrboda lived with His sons, Hel having already claimed her realm deep beneath the rest. 

Girls always matured so much more quickly than boys.

When He arrived at her door, Angrboda let Him in, scowling her welcome.  “You look terrible. What is wrong?” she said, making a place for Him to sit and bringing a leathern jack of ale for Him to drain.

“Why do you care?” He asked.  

She smiled, her teeth large and perfect, her features fearfully beautiful and her laugh full of malice.  By Audhumla’s foaming teats, but she was as perfect as she had been the day they had first met and clawed each other naked in these very woods and she had ridden Him until the earth buckled and burned.

“Curiosity.  I’ve never seen You suffer before.  I’ve seen You beaten, imprisoned, fooled, and furious, but this is different.”

“Where are the boys?” He asked instead.

At that moment the door to Angrboda’s hall flew wide open and Fenris, great wolf and his Daddy’s pup, entered with massive paws slapping dust from the stone floor.  His body coiled about by his brother Jorgmundr, a serpent still growing but already larger than any snake upon dry land. 

On the far side of his sons, a cloaked figure entered as well, a hand resting upon Jor where he rested upon Fen’s shoulder.  “Did you like Your visit with Hel, then? Get to talk a bit?” Angrboda asked them.

“Yes.  She was very gracious,” Sigyn said, pushing Her hood back so Her black hair gleamed in the darkness of the hall.  

Loki stood, His heart beating wildly for the first time, His mind racing too fast to catch a thought for the first time, His hands shaking for the first time.

And as He lay writhing beneath the viper back in the time that was, rather than the time that had been, He knew that Sigyn had been the one who started time for him.  She had caught Him so hard that He could not wiggle free from the net of time.

And He should know.  He had invented the net after all.

“What?” He said that and could not find the words to say more.   _ He  _ could not make the words shake loose from His mouth.  

What are You doing here?

What are You doing with my boys?

What did You want with my daughter?

What are You doing to Me?

“What?” She asked back.  Then She took off the cloak and sat in the seat He had left and drank some of the drink He had not finished, while their hostess and His sons gossiped about matters in the Realms of Hel near the hearth of the great hall.  “I thought I should know Your children, if I am to marry their father.” She reached out and touched the back of His hand and then slid Her fingers so they tucked under His and for the first time Loki held hands with someone.  

“You know what I am.  What I have done and yet You want to marry Me.”

“Since the moment I saw You return to Asgard with Sleipnir.  You were such a saucy mare and then You turned back into this self and gave Odin the naughtiest wink when You presented him that best of horses.  I had never laughed so hard and I have loved You since then.” 

There was a shock.  He’d somehow missed Her all of this time.

Sigyn snorted, a great ale-ish snort from His cup and then set it down and and laughed and laughed and laughed, “Oh, I can still see it… And the look on Odin’s face and then You said, You said...“ 

She took a deep breath and tried to calm Herself, ”’Surprise.  Don’t say I never got you anything.’ And he was so angry…” She bent over the table and pounded it with Her fist and laughed all the harder.

At Him.

She would not be docile.

And probably not grateful, either.

Loki nodded and then, taking no leave of the others, who would not expect it of Him at any rate, stood and tossed Her over His shoulder to carry Her to His house.

She laughed all the way.

He spread Sigyn’s black hair over His bed and thought that it was more beautiful than even Sif’s true gold locks that He had given her Himself.

He lay over Her and stared into Her leaf green eyes and thought that they were the most dazzling eyes, even more so than Freya’s blue eyes that had seduced every creature in the Realms of gods and mortals.

He slowly fucked into Her, watching carefully as She arched and moaned beneath Him, as long legs twined with His own and then up His back to lock about Him, so She could hold even wildfire in place, and He was pulled ever farther into a cunt that was sweeter than Idunn’s apples.  

That night, which was the first night that He could see as separate and distinct from all others, Loki put guards at His walls, barred His gate, and set locks upon His doors.

 

 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have always wanted to find a way to reconcile NorseLoki and MarvelLoki, in some way this is my attempt to do so.


	9. To Market To Market

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noirin goes shopping, Bredg tries to explain himself.

 

They beat the storm home, but not by much.  While Bredg had finished securing the horses, Noirin had seen the pair of pretty brown cows and the long-eared nanny goats into the byre.  The nanny’s stubborn mate she left to endure the wind and wet as he skipped away from her when she tried to move him indoors.

Fine, he could soak his hard head then, she thought.

Then she and Bredg were both up running for the house before the mass of black clouds and the cold wind that forced them across the sky, as if it were herding them inside in their turn.

Under the cover of the porch, Noirin stopped to watch him as he sped before the storm, the shadow of it covering his and yet never touching his heel and he somehow landed with a long jump so he stood before her just as an arrow’s flight of rain struck the helpless earth.  So much rain that it left puddles of water that the red soil made look like the ground bled.

Something about the sight made her shudder.

“Come in from the cold, then,” Bredg said, and pushed her lightly through the door before she could go on her own.

“It’s not the cold, it’s-”

He took her about the waist to pull her in, his knees bent a bit so he could jut his hips against hers and grind.  The thick, iron-hard bar of his cock rubbed just as it should against the crown of her cunt and as much as she wanted to push away, instead Noirin’s eyes closed and she sighed, hating that he watched her, certain that he was smirking.

“ _ Synge, auðr,  _ _ bare for meg _ ,” his already deep voice was so soft, so unlike himself, that her eyes opened.  He did not smirk, and his thick hair hid his eyes so she could not tell what he thought, “You sang for my brother, now sing for me the way you did last night.  The way only _ I  _ can make you sing.”

When he tried to pull her closer, to kiss, she slammed her hands to the wall of his chest and shoved, “No!  I may be a slave but I won’t be shamed by you again! I won’t share a bed with a man who calls me a dog and… and…” he had let her go and she stumbled back and rubbed her hand on her nose to stop the cold she was surely getting to make her eyes run so, “thinks I’m not good enough to warm his -”

She tried to leave, knowing that the rain would cover her face and veil her abasement from him and hide that despite the humiliation, she craved his bed, even still.

He was faster, he was stronger, he was surer of what he wanted than she was of what she did not.

“No,” when she reached the door he crowded her close, holding her wrists against the rough wood.  “Last night was not to shame you.”

She waited and yet he said no more, only stepped so he pressed her in place.

Soft, open lips kissed where her hair was too short to cover the knobs of the top of her backbone, down to the low neck of the soft, old tunic of his she wore for working.  One of his long hands spread over her back, not pushing or grabbing, but simply covering as much of her as he could. He trailed a fingertip over the gold of his arm-ring that was still around her neck and something in the touch that did not touch her skin made her shudder and her eyes close as she tried to feel it.

Then he ran that finger beneath it just as slowly.

When she gulped he kissed the place where her skin jumped, and then along the underside of her jaw.  Still soft, still open mouthed, sighing slightly as he moved against her, now nuzzling under her ear and then kissing more and more.  

No one had ever kissed her so gently before.  As if they cared for her and that just touching her with their mouth was a pleasure for them.  Yet, even then every touch of his mouth to her skin felt like a bitter lie. Or at even more, like they were meant to hide something.

For no reason that she could think, Noirin started to sob, trying to tell herself it was just she was tired from the long day.

 

That morning - 

Bredg made his way up into the loft, a tin-punched lantern lighting his way as the sun was not yet up.  

He had left Liv’s trunk open and the air was filled with lavender.  He pushed the shutters on the one small window out to let out the sweet yet medicinal scent and then looked through the garments.  There was a plain blue workday dress with a yellow apron held by simple circle broaches. He could not remember her wearing something so unadorned, so it had probably come with her when she had moved into his house and then never been pulled forth again.  He’d loved bringing her jewels and rare cloth from their raids and from trading days in the north and east, making her even more blatantly gorgeous. When they had been together he had worn only black at her bidden, so he could play sinister shadow to her golden beauty, the two of them intimidating his foes and hers.

The night before the last when he had dressed for the boast at his father’s hall had been the first time he had bothered with any of his own finery since she had gone.  Some of his enemies had taken that as a sign that Liv had stolen his heart when she went from his house. The truth had more to do with his vanity. 

There were other gowns and dresses within but the plain one would do for a thrall on market day, he thought, laying it over his arm.  

Needless to say, she refused to wear it.  For pure contrariness he was certain.

“Why would I be changing, then?” she asked, not looking up from where she was dipping rough rye bread into fat left from the dinner bacon.  “You’ll be having me carry this and that, will you not? Then why bother and ruin another dress?”

“I thought you might like to -”

“Wear a dead woman’s castoffs?”  She snorted, “Thank you, no. My luck is bad enough without being haunted.”

Bredg shook his head, “Liv’s not dead, girl.  We put each other aside. She’s married with a Faroe’s man now, raising my babies with him.”

“What?”  She could not have looked more astonished.

“She was big with my children when they met and she decided she preferred him.  Just as she was followed about by this waste of my food when she came to me.” He smiled fondly at his not quite son.

Kjell looked back and forth between them.  Even though neither had raised their voices it was clear that what had been wrong with the two of them the day before had not been resolved, even if he couldn’t understand what they were saying.  Bredg frowned at the boy, “If you’re done go load the pony.”

At the door, Kjell turned and asked quietly, “Will my mother be at the market, do you think?”

He must have heard Bredg say her name.

Bredg nodded at him, “Yes.  If they stay until morning you can stay over at their encampment if you want.”  Kjell blushed and nodded back, leaving.

He turned back to the woman, who was staring at him like he was mad, ”Fine, there are packs hanging near the oven.  You can carry two of them. You’re strong.”

“You’re savages, you are.  You let her go off with another man when she had your children and you kept her’s instead?”  Her face was flushed with anger at something that was none of her concern, but all he could think was how it was the same pretty rose as her nipples.  

His cock ached for her.

“He was happy here.  Now get the packs.”

She gave him a look that might have withered a cockstand less puissant than his and pushed the rest of the bread into her mouth and took the plate to scour with salt, her cheeks as full as a mouse.  Bredg refused to laugh at the sight. 

Until she was outside.

 

Bredg made certain that Noirin walked beside him.  When she would start to dawdle behind him, he would step back, taking her arm so she had to stay with him.  “Don’t think for a second that you are going to slip away.”

“As if I would.  There’s still nowhere for me to go,” she answered, sullenly.

Kjell followed them with the pony, laden with early onions and horsebeans.

The market was a busy one.  They had not been the only ones raiding in the last months, and the crops coming in would need to be prepared and pickled and laid up for the winter soon enough.  All of the signs showed it would be a bad one. Thick manes upon the cattle, mists on the waters, spiders already moving inside, and even extra rings about the moon told the tale.    

Bredg it seemed had already made a bargain for his own crops, trading with someone called Bagi for Danish _ byg _ , dried peas, and angelica, which he could not make take on his own land.  He told her this as if she might care.

He spoke to Kjell, “Take the pony straight to Bagi’s stall and give him a penny to keep her there until I’m ready to go.  You can unload for her for him and then go look for Liv. She and Vøgg will encamp nearer to the water. He doesn’t like to leave his boats out of sight.”

When the boy was gone Bredg turned to Noirin, who was staring about with great, brown eyes.  She’d clearly never seen so large a market nor so many goods, “Are you good with a needle? Sewing?  Embroidery? All the like?”

“Aye.  Well enough.  I’m no master but I can make this and that,” she answered.

Bredg took off one of the arm rings he wore over the black silk tunic he had worn to peacock his way about the fair day.  “Go and find some sturdy cloth and thread, what you might need to make yourself something to wear then. I won’t have anyone living with me looking like a … a streal.  Show anyone this and they will know to collect from me later. Do not think to sell that, no one will give you as much as a bent tin piece for it and you’ll probably get a beating for stealing from your master.”

Red anger crossed her heart, “If you think to lay a hand on me you best plan to never sleep again.”

“Not by me, but by anyone you tried to involve in your crime.”

“What crime?  I haven’t done a thing for you to treat me as if I can’t be trusted.  You’re the thief,” she said, whipping the ring from his fingers and walking away from the smile on his face that said he had only said what he said to goad her, and that her temper meant he had won.

“Wait,” he said, stopping her and taking it from her hand.  With little strain he pulled it so the two, thick ends of the gold ring were farther apart and then slid it around her throat, “It’s a good thing you have a little neck.  Now anyone who sees that will know you’re mine and you won’t be meddled with.”

“I’ll spit in your eye one day, see if I don’t…” she muttered in Irish as she left him to his own bargaining.  

She walked through the smells and heat of the crowd.  There was surely everything in the world on display! Animals for trade that she had never seen, such as horses larger than bulls, goats that the Devil would fear, chickens with feathers fine as hair.  Baskets of spices - bright yellow, or red as powdered blood, or blue like stone - that made the air thick and strange. Jewels and combs and perfumed unguents because the Northmen were vain, not just that one. Amber in beads and plackets, made into belts and endless necklaces.  Tanned hides, dyed green or black or scarlet. 

People, even.  Though thankfully no children.

There was music, as well, some of it good, most of it not.  

Using motions and counting out with her fingers and gesturing to her new, unpleasant adornment, she bought a pasty filled with goat cheese and some sweet herbs and then a few yards of grey wool and a few less of green that would make a dress and one of those silly aprons the women here wore. Another table had enough sturdy thread for the sewing, and she bought a no doubt expensive needle as well, just to waste his funds. 

No one seemed to find it strange that she was wandering about spending her master’s money.  

Indeed, most of them seemed more than eager to sell her everything she wanted quickly and to have her move along.  

So far she had not seen anyone selling finer thread needed for the decorative parts he seemed to require even a slave to wear, the proud bastard.

As she searched Noirin heard fussing and yelling from the part of the fair nearer to the water.   For a moment she considered ignoring it and heading back to her search for floss, but frankly she was more interested in the trouble.

There was a large tent, striped in black and gold, with tables set with goods, mostly carved wood and baskets of dried kelp and woodruff.  There was a double cradle set on the ground beside it, with a pair of babies waving their fists in the air and kicking at their swaddling.

Bent over them was that great big lad from the feast, his dirty gold hair and mangy beard hiding his face, but his head was softly cocked to the side and she could see his fingers waving slowly down at the babes.  They burbled at him, their little rosebud mouths bubbling and grinning at the madman.

He burbled back, ignoring the cup that struck his shoulder but then not the one that hit him in the head.  He pawed at his ear and moaned like a child.

On the other side of the tables an astonishingly beautiful woman was berating the great bear of a man, throwing things and trying to shake off Kjell who was holding her arm to try and stop her or at least ruin her very good aim.  Her hair was as gold as field of wheat in high summer, falling loose as a maiden’s. Under her dress - a velvet bliaut like might have been worn by a Frankish princess rather than one of these Northwoman - was a figure of a woman the likes of which even the Romans would have appreciated, little hidden by the heavy fabric that was cut rather narrow to show off her breast and length of leg and well rounded haunch.

Even not knowing the language, the harshness of it the way that Kjell winced at the words shouted at the man who was nearly his uncle, Noirin could tell they were cruel.  Indeed, the target of her ire flinched more under their onslaught than at the various things that struck him here and there on his big body.

Noirin stared at the lovely, unkind woman that her Bredg had been married to, who had mothered Kjell, who has a good enough lad, who she had thought dead, and her heart ached for Soren, whose only fault was no fault of his own.

Giving the woman a hard scowl and a rude finger, she yelled, “Now why would you do that?  He’s got no harm in him. Kjell can tell you.”

The woman answered in thick, ungainly Latin, “He’s cursed.  Cursed by the unlucky god. I won’t have him near my babies or my boy.”  Her pretty blue eyes narrowed as she peered forward, staring at Noirin. “Where’d you get that?”

“Your man.  Once your man, at any rood.  He offered me your clothes, too, but I wouldn’t soil myself with them,” she called back.  “Toss another fucking thing at him and I’ll call Bredg here to make you sorry for it.”

From the way the woman paled the threat was less empty than Noirin thought.

Taking the big fella’s arm, to lead him away, she spoke more calmly, in the Irish she knew he could understand, pixilated or not, “Hey, now, remember me?  We’re friends, right? Well don’t listen to that one. She’s no one to give a care for. Shall I sing you one?”

For a moment he went stiff as wood and then seemed to see her, “I just wanted to see the babies.  I wouldn’t hurt them,” he said in Irish as well. “But I was loud and they cried. But then I made them stop.  I had this!” He showed her a fine chain of silver hung with pearls, “I danced it over them and they liked it.”

“Sure they did.  Babies love sparkling things and things that move.”

He put the chain in his shirt and then took her hand instead, the way a little boy might who was afraid of getting lost.

And other babies, even big ones, she thought.

“About the mad king?  Will you sing about the mad king?”

“Ah, I only know the one of him.  But I know another about like fellows.”

“Like him?  Like me?”

“Yes, now show me where you got from and I’ll sing it as we go.”

_ Is maith go gcaitheamar buachaillí na n-adhmaid _ __   
_ Buachaillí buachaillí Bonney _ __   
_ Tá na buachaillí sin go léir báire _ __   
_ Ós rud é go n-éireoidh siad go léir, agus maireann siad san aer _ __   
_ Agus ní mian leo aon deoch ná airgead _ __   
__   
_ Spiorad spiorad mar thintreach _ __   
_ Ar threoraigh an turas sin domsa _ __   
_ Crith an ghrian agus an crith talún pale _ _   
_ __ Aon uair a rinne siad spiorad orm

_ Anocht, rachaidh mé ag dúnmharú _ __   
_ An fear sa ghealach le púdar _ __   
_ A fhoireann a bhriseasfaidh mé agus a mhadra Beidh mé ag croí _ __   
_ Agus ní bheidh aon deamhain níos airde ann _ __   
__   
_ Fósann mé buachaillí buachaillí, buachaillí buachaillí Bonney _ __   
_ I gcás na buachaillí sin tá bóna _ __   
_ Ós rud é go n-éireoidh siad go léir, agus maireann siad an t-aer _ _   
_ __ Agus ní mian leo aon deoch ná airgead.

 

As she sang they walked through the throngs, who made way for them as they would for any king, but with fear in their eyes.  How could they not see the poor man had no harm in him? 

She was about to start another verse when he began to yell and wave, “Mother!  Mother! I saw babies and they laughed for me! They look just like my brother!”

Dropping Noirin’s hand, he ran towards the queen who was clearly searching for him with a group of armed and nicely dressed guards.  He seemed to have forgotten she was there.

“How ungrateful men are.  And foolish to leave good company.”

A voice, deep and with the purr of a well-satisfied cat, thrummed her nerves like a bard lightly working a harp to make it sing.

Noirin jumped a whirled about.  There, looming above her, was a man that she could have sworn had not been there before.  He was very, very close, and when he bent close his long, red curls brushed her shoulder, then her cheek.  Even though he wore only a linen tunic with embroidered snakes tangled about the neck and short trews, with his long, boney feet and tall legs bare beneath he seemed hot, indeed he must have had fever because she felt herself break out in prickly heat from the warmth of his body.

She stepped back, giving herself space, so she could see his face.  

He tossed his head with a laugh, his hair now a wild mass around him so she could only make out smokey grey eyes.  Brilliant and light and with bits of red.

She had never seen such eyes.  They could not be real.

“I’m… I… “ She touched the ring at her throat, “This is Jarl Bredg’s and I am under his protection.”

He laughed, like the popping of a wet log in a hearth, and put his hand on the ring. Except there was no pressure from his touch, as if he were spirit and not flesh.  

She couldn’t look anywhere but his eyes and she couldn’t see anything but them and the gold turned so hot under his touch she thought it would melt and run in rivulets down her breasts.  “Is that what you think that is? Protection? Oh, how sweet… If I had more time I would teach you better. You look flushed.”

Her lips opened and she licked them.  Because of the heat. She was terribly, terribly hot, and for a moment thought of slipping out of the heavy tunic and finding any kind of breeze.  It was so hot and her clothing so heavy that she couldn’t move. She was practically panting and her arms were leaden.

“Noirin!”  

Bredg’s voice cut through the mass of those muttering about them, and then there was a crack of thunder from the mountains.  

“Ah, both of our jailers’ calls,” the man hissed, his hand moving languidly away from her, “such pity.”

He walked past her where she still stood, staring where he had been, perfectly still, “Later we shall have all of the time in the world to play,  _ min næstan dýrgripur. _ ”

“What’s wrong with you?  Did you drink too much mead whilst shopping!”

Bredg was shouting at her.

“What?”

“I’ve been talking to you for minutes now and you’re staring straight through me.  Are you well?” He put a hand to her brow before she could shy away, and then pulled back quickly, “You’re burning.  We’d better get back before you’re caught in the storm. Come on,” he said, taking the pack of her purchases from her shoulder.

As they left the market Noirin felt someone looking at her.  It was the queen, her other son nowhere to be seen. 

When she saw Noirin looking back at her she inclined her head ever so slightly, smiling rather sadly.

 

That night -

“Oh, now, what’s this?” 

That one’s voice was so soft and tender that it made Noirin sob all of the harder, waiting for the mocking.  She was so tired and the fear that had been with her, even in sleep, even in his bed, since she’d first heard the warning bell in the Priory that the raiders were coming had left her muscles sore, made worse by that mad, strange dog the day before, and that … man today in the market.  

There had been a wrongness to him that tasted like a cold metal bit between her teeth that made Noirin want to run.  

But none of it was so bad as the pain that Bredg’s sweet and yet heartless kisses caused.

“Noirin?” he whispered her name and tried to turn her about.  

“No,” she said, pulling back, burying her face in her hands, the back of her hands scraping on the wood.  “No. No, don’t be that way.”

“What way?” he asked, not forcing her but again close, close to her ear, his breath tickling her skin and making her breath come harder but her tears not stop.

“As if you like me.  As if you-”

“I like you.  I like you too well for anyone’s good, mostly my own.  I like your willful eye and your sweet voice. I like that you fight even after you have lost and that you can laugh at anything.  I like the look of you when you come and when you defy me for the pure, spiteful pleasure of it. Turn around, Noirin. Turn around.”

He stepped back and she slowly slid her hand to the door handle, squeezing it hard enough to bruise her palm, waiting for him to stop her.

Instead he gave a laugh, small and hurting, “So you’d rather the storm than look at me?”

She turned, no longer crying, knowing her face was tight and red, “No.  You’re beautiful and I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I-” he stopped and looked at her, giving up on whatever lie he was about to tell before it was even born.  “For now, just this.” 

When they kissed she could see him taste the salt from her tears and she wondered if he would spit them out, fearing the bond that could come from them.  Instead, he licked her lips and then into her mouth and put his hand into her short hair so he could pull her head back and take her balance so it was only his arm about her that held her up.

“When I take you to bed now I am going to do everything I didn’t do last night.”

“So it’ll be a long night then?” she said, sniffling around the last of her tears.

He pressed his forehead to hers and sighed, “I would that it would last for the rest of my life.  Thank you for your kindness to my brother, Noirin.”

“Are you bedding me for the sake of that?” she asked, worried that there could be no other reason that someone such as he would want a scrawny slave.

“No,” he took her hand and pressed it to his phallus that jumped and surged under her touch, even through the wool of his leggings, “for the sake of this.”  Then he stood up straight and looked down at her with a return of his arrogance and his sneer, looping his finger though the ring about her neck, “Now, to bed with you,  _ auðr _ .”

Her anger and words to go with it started to surge when there was a pounding at the door behind her.

 

Bredg and his cock both wanted to curse whoever was at his door to a liver full of maggots, but before the words came out the door flew open and Thorvald was in his house, bent over and panting, “Come now, Jarl!  Your mother sends me. The volva has spoken and Loki has told her where the blood is to be shed.”

Then, he straightened up, and seemed to notice Noirin for the first time, “Sorry,” he added.

Thank Freya’s sweet cunt the idiot only spoke Norse!

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Noirin sings is a variation on "Mad Tom of Bedlam" by Jolie Holland - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZXJuk5zNZ8
> 
> For those of you who are annoyed by costuming mistakes in historical films and television shows (what, just me?) I know that the bliaut Liv wears is probably around a hundred years too early, but the dating for it's first appearance is sketchy at best.


	10. In Darkness We Are Honest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bredg learns and Noirin experiences

From yards away the volva’s hut was hot and stank of burning.  Even the heavy storm that he had climbed through could not block the scent.  Rather, the wet made it into a wall of foulness that he had to pass through like a spirit.

His mother’s two loyal guards - Halvar and Gemi - flanked the door, their wet leather armor adding to the stink.

Bredg lowered his hood and shook water from his boots as he ducked to enter and was shocked at the transformation within.  What had been a scrupulously clean and tidy space was now filled with remnants of dead animals and rotting greenery as the witch had clearly tried offering after offering to propitiate and cajole Loki into making his desires known.  Many of the bones that had hung from the ceiling, always before softly clacking against each other and whistling with a hollow wail when angry wind found a way into the sturdy little building, had also been thrown into the fire, showing evidence of greater and greater desperation as no answers had come.

Of an even greater shock was the appearance of the also normally tidy old woman.  Her once sturdy body seemed wasted, with flesh hanging like flags from her arms as she reached for the cup that his mother stooped to offer her.  The last iron had fled her hair that was now the color of purest ice and the sagging skin beneath her eyes was stained with exhaustion.

“That bastard,” Bredg cursed his god.  

The volva, with the Queen’s aid, sat up, her head shaking, her voice weak and strained from days and nights of prayer, “No, Jarl.  This was not the Unlucky One’s … challenging temperament.” She laughed hoarsely, “Not only that. For Him to come to our world is ever harder since He was enchained by the other gods.”  She took another sip of what looked to be watered mead from the Queen’s cup and then patted her on the arm, “You’re still a nice girl, even if you are a queen. Now listen well, because I must rest.  Loki has said that you must take the girl to the highest peak.”

Bredg laughed, “He wants me to haul her to Trondheim where they love me and ours so well?  We’ll be killed by the folk there before I have the chance to cut her throat.”

A feeling of cool relief filled his belly even as his blood burned and throbbed like lava - his need to do anything to save his brother and his growing reluctance to do anything that would cause more harm to Noirin than he had already done were warring in his sinews and making him ill.  

“No, no!” the volva snapped, her eyes suddenly keen, “that is not the highest peak!  Only men think it so, but the Gods above see more clearly. The highest peak is here,” she leaned off her bed, his mother’s quick grasp keeping her from rolling off, and lifted a long piece of bone that was charred upon one end.  With a few quick motions she drew a trail from his father’s lands and across, to the first great range of mountains.

The land of the Jotnar.  

Where else?  He thought ruefully.  Close enough for a few days journey and his only worry would be trolls and bandits, not the angry Norsemen of Trondheim who hated his father as a foreign Jarl and himself for more personal reasons relating to the wife of their chieftain.  And his daughter, too.

The volva drew one mountain larger than the others and stabbed at it with the bone so it pierced the dirt floor and stood in place.  “There. The mountain Galdhø is where his cave in the lands of the Gods touches with our world. You must leave by the morning after next to reach it by    _Laugardag_.  He commands you to kill her with a swift hand and one blow, with a knife sharp enough to cut the air in two and make the sky fall to the ground through the gap.  Else He will plague your brother until his final day.”

Falling back, she waved her hand, “Go now, all of you.  Even you, my dear Elka,” she said, smiling at the queen.  “Someday this hut and the misery of being the Gods’ voice will be yours.  Go enjoy your family and pretty dresses while you can, heh?”

When they were back outside the rain had turned to a soft mist and Bredg took his mother’s arm to escort her home.

She winced in pain, and he pushed back the elegantly embroidered sleeve of her costly linen gown.  

From wrist to joint his mother’s pale skin was darkened with bruises and thin scratches.  Near her hand the marks from teeth were deep and red. She carefully rolled the fabric back into place, wincing again.  “Soren. At the end of the marketing he wanted to see the babes again and when I told him no and took his hand to lead him home he … he behaved like any spoiled child might.  When he saw he had given me hurt he ran away in shame, afraid that he would be punished. Kjell found him hiding behind some rocks on the beach and brought him back. When he was in his room he fell into a fit, his mouth foamed, back bowed, every muscle pulled to the point of screaming.”

She grew quiet, trying not to cry.

“He’s worse, then.”

“Yes.”  She sniffed once and then gave a hard noise like a bone was in her throat.  “Shall I make you laugh around a mouthful of bitter ale? I almost sent one of my thralls to fetch the Irish woman to sing to him, to see if it would calm him enough to let him rest.  But then the volva’s message came.”

It was nearly dark and when they reached his mother’s house all was peaceful, Soren’s fit having ended it seemed.  “The Trickster is ever true to His name,” was all he said to his mother and then, kissing her gently, refused her offer of a cup of mead or wine before heading home.

Bredg was glad his feet could walk home without his head needing to be called upon, for his thoughts were a nest of serpents - tail-tied, hissing, and biting at each other in a fury of frustration.

Why had Loki, of all of the beautiful girls and fair-faced men that He could have chosen from picked that stubborn, mouthy, flat-chested, plain-faced bit of trouble to be his price?

Bredg sighed.  Because she was also wonderfully funny and smart, kind and strong, with a voice like licking honey and a cunt to match.  

He shook his head like a hound bothered by a fly and tried to stop thinking of her that way, of any way other than as a sacrifice that must be made.

The house was dark and quiet. Before stepping in Bredg took off his muddy boots and leg wrappings and turned the latch with extra care.  He kept his door hinges un-oiled so he could hear anyone trying to enter, and in the silence of the night it sounded like a squeal of pain.  He winced, imaging _her_ stirring from her blanket near the fire at the loudness of it.  

Noirin was not by the fire, but she had left the green stone oil lamp lit on the table and a bowl of pease cooked with pork fat and a slice of bread spread with goat cheese under a napkin for him, just as a wife might do when her man was late coming home.  He wondered if she had gone to sleep in byre for the night, the rain having stopped and Kjell being at his mother’s 'campment.

Something in the sight made his throat ache like he was sick.  Rather than eating, he pushed open the shutters and stared at the great moon in the suddenly clear sky and mountains.

Then he heard a soft sigh.  

Silvered by the moon, Noirin, naked in his bed, rolled over and lifted a tousle-haired head to look at him sleepily.  “Is all well?” Her voice was also sleepy and quiet as a secret properly kept.

No.  It was far from.  

What he was about to do was wrong.  But he already hated himself for what he was to do, and she would certainly hate him too, so for this one night he could pretend that there was no more to the world than this.  No morning, no days to come, no horses to be ridden, mountains to be traversed, knives to be made sharp.

There was nothing but the sweet darkness and the bright moon and the woman in his bed.

 

When the door opened Noirin started to wake but she was so tired after the last few days she could not raise her head, so she hoped that it was Bredg and not someone meaning to rob the place and kill her in her sleep.  Or it wasn’t Bredg meaning to kill her in her sleep, either.

The look he had given her when the big fellow from the ship had come to gather him had been…

No one had ever looked at her like that before.  Like he longed to throw her onto his bed and out into the storm at the same moment.  She’d chosen the bed for herself, but who knew what he would pick when he found her there.

A light slanted over her closed eyes and she rolled over and found the room flooded in moonlight with Bredg staring out of the window.  When she spoke he did not answer. He turned towards her, the light to his back so she could not see his face.

“Did you like the dinner?  I’m not much of a cook but I figured it would be hard to cause too much trouble with pease and pork.”  

He still did not speak or move.  Which normally was how she like him the best, silent and not bothering her, but the situation between them had been so strange the last few days that now all she felt was cold and joined by a strange hollowness, as if her chest was a cave of winter air.  “Fine, then, be quiet and strange. Quieter and stranger, I might say,” she knelt and felt around for her tunic.

In a few long strides he was at the side of the bed, his callouses rasping over her skin as he wrapped his hands about her ribs, his mouth open against hers, kissing not like the taking kind of before he had gone, but the giving kind, his lips tender, gently opening, drawing her into opening too.  

When she whimpered into his mouth he slid his hands around her back, drawing her close so her nipples, now tight and delicate, pressed into his woolen shirt that teased her.  He kissed over to her ear, blowing and turning her insides molten and everywhere soft and when he sighed her name, “Noirin,” needy and hot she let herself forget everything that had come before this moment.  Everything that would come after. She let herself believe that he was the man who held her, whose hands tracing over her back to count the knobs of her spine, to learn the feeling of her skin, cared for her.

That the man who licked along her neck and palmed one breast, pinching the peak so her cunt pulsed and her wet ran down her legs was her lover.  

She pulled restlessly at his tunic until he grabbed it at the back of the neck and pulled it off, so that instead of the rough wool, his skin like cream rubbed against hers, making her hungrier and hungrier for him.  “Please,” she tried not to beg but her voice would not be tamed and she reached for his cock.

He stopped her hand and for a moment she wanted to cry at the cruelty of it, that he would deny her again and shame her so, that she had begged for the privilege of the humiliation, but then he quickly worked the laces and freed himself, wrapping her hand back around it.

Oh, it felt good!  Hot and hard and long.  Very long. A bit frighteningly long. Even though she had known that what one saw was different than what was felt.  Still, she gave him a tug, not too hard, but enough to make it jump under her touch and for him to greedily cover her shoulders and breasts with his mouth, sucking where he had pinched before, hurting with his teeth and soothing with his tongue and lips.  

Her eyes fluttered closed with pleasure and she worked her hand back and forth on his lovely phallus, the silky glide of the skin back and forth over the shaft and the fine bit of wet from its head rolling down the back of her fingers.  She lifted her hand and let him watch her as she licked it clean, craving the taste of him, like the sea that he had crossed to find her.

She cocked her head and then kissed him, letting him taste himself on her.  Smiling against his mouth she wrapped her hands around his rope of hair, pulling it free from the braid so she could feel it slither and wind about her fingers.  

His mouth opened and his nose flared like a stallion at a run, “Lay down and spread your legs,” he told her.  

Not freeing him, Noirin let herself fall back.  Bredg caught himself on his elbows on either side of her face and the push of his bones against hers made her writhe beneath him for more and more.  He was painted by the moon and dark and looked like a shade come back to earth to give her pleasure and steal her soul.

With a quick, brutal motion he had used his knees to push her’s wide and his cock nestled itself along the length of her slit.  “You’re so hot. Like a little oven waiting just to burn me, to leave me covered in scars so I can’t forget you,” he gritted out, raising up so he could look at her.

She couldn’t see his eyes.

His neck was tense and tight.  Noirin planted her feet on the bed and pushed herself up against him, grinding him against the crown of her sex, her fingers wrapped about his wrists, nails digging in.

When he finally entered her it was slow.  A long arm wrapped itself about her back that was already raised from the bed, holding her to him, holding her still, so he could take his time.  “Kiss me, kiss me,” she moaned over and over, needing more of him in her, needing him to bury her beneath his body and take every part of her, the loneliness of the strange land she had been in, surrounded by those who she could not speak to, still in her and needing to be pushed out so there would be only him.

He stroked her hair back from her face and kissed her, still with an arm wrapped about her, now her legs up and about his ribs, and her cunt pulsed and drew him in, beating and beating and his cock stroked with the beats, and her hips moved in his rhythm and his breath matched hers.

Rocking slightly, she freed an arm from where it was pinned by his to her side, and touched his face.  He pushed and rubbed against her hand like a cat, and in turn reached between them and pushed and rubbed against her pearl.

Never had anyone touched her there whilst within her, and Noirin’s body went mad for the delight of it, so he had to pin her in place with a hand to her other hip, holding her still while he rubbed and fucked her and until her thoughts disappeared in a roil of pleasure that stuttered from her lips in a scream.

When she came back he pulled her legs apart and draped them over his shoulders, so she could barely even hold onto the earth when he now took her roughly, stroking hard, his beautiful arms rigid with effort, but his fingers still tenderly stroking at her.  When his peak came on him he pushed down on her with his other hand and his phallus met a place in her that made her flood with both his seed and her wet and scream again.

This time with him.

Their voices together - his dark and deep, hers husky and pure - were answered by a wolf far in the mountains.

Noirin waited for him to roll away, but instead he laughed and stroked her hair back again, and kissed her.  “I’ve had some nights, and some beauties in my bed, but never one that could make Hati stop chasing the moon and sing to her, _min dýrr auðr_.”

So well pleasured, Noirin could not even be mad, instead, as he moved off of her and then pulled her to sleep, back to his front, her head pillowed on his arm, she whispered as she fell asleep, “What do I have to do to get you to stop calling me that?”

A soft kiss fell onto her temple, “Only to change yourself in every way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Norse mythology the sun - Soli - is chased by a wolf named Skoll, his brother Hati chases Mani, the moon. At Ragnarok they will catch and devour them. In some stories they are called the Fenris's sons and therefore Loki's grandsons.
> 
> Laugardag is Norse for the last day of the week, or Loki's day.


	11. All Journeys Must Begin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bredg and Noirin set out.

Something woke Noirin.  

At first she thought it was the light, no longer silver but golden, streaming through the still open shutters, unfurling warmth along her backbone.

She jerked up with a start.

She’d never slept through to the daylight in her life and she sat up in a panic, clutching a blanket to her nakedness.  For a moment she back in the Priory, sleeping in the kitchen and waiting for a kicking from the old nun who had run the kitchens when she was a child and hated a slugabed even worse than she did the Devil himself.

The Devil was wise enough to fear that old bitch and stay out of her kitchen.

Then a soft, wry chuckle came from behind Noirin.  “Well, there’s a lesson learned about awaking you. Though most in my experience find being kissed on the back a gentle enough way to meet the day.”

Bredg.

She remembered where she was.  With a soft gulp she turned to look at him.  

Oh, he was lovely in the sunlight… His black hair, like the darkest, finest quality ink - that which the Prioress used for her stern letters to the Bishop - against the paleness of his shoulder and chest, looking as if formed for the pleasures of looking and touching, smooth and hard, broad and lean.  His green eyes, normally so crisply amused were now kindly so. His thin, clever mouth, normally a line of annoyance, was turned up just barely at the corners with what seemed like fondness.

His long, thick cock was stirring in its nest of black curls, bobbing slightly as if trying to catch her eye, which it succeeded at.

“What?” She managed to croak out, stunned and slightly drunk with a proper amount of sleep.

Bredg fell back against his pillows with a laugh, “I thought to wake you easy but you’re as nervous as a mouse in a roomful of cats.”

“For some of us the _ world _ is a roomful of cats,  _ Máistir Faeles _ ,” she answered.  “I was startled by the sun.  I’ve never seen it from the direction of sleeping.  Oh, Holy Savior! The goats have probably eaten their way through the fence by now!”  

When she started to scramble off of the bed a strong arm took her by the waist and tugged her back so she was laying half on Bredg, nestled between his legs.  “The goats are fed.”

Pushing to get away, “The ponies, then.”

A big hand settled in her hair and began to gently rub her scalp.  It felt so wonderful, to be petted. It felt so strange. “The ponies are fed and in the paddock.  Before you fret, the chickens are seen to, the pig is rooting to her content, and the beans are soaking for dinner.”

“Why?” she asked, nervous, her eyes shifting from side to side as she tried to decide if she had died in her sleep and gone to some pagan version of heaven where all a woman had to do was lay in bed all day with a handsome man and do no work.

“Because it needed to be done?” he asked back, still petting her.

“I mean why did you not wake me for my work?  I’m the slave here. The thrall, that’s your word, isn’t it?  I’m your thrall,” she said bitterly, knowing that a night’s fancies and a morning’s kindness was not enough to change the world.

“Because you were too sweet to wake,” he said, and kissed her, full on the mouth, gently yet firmly holding her by the chin.  Kissed her though she’d not rinsed her mouth nor bathed, nor anything else she would expect a man so fussy would want his woman to do before he kissed her good morning.

His woman.

She was not his woman.

But at the moment he didn’t seem to know that and Noirin felt no need to remind him though she would not let herself forget.  

 

When night started to fade away, the sun still hidden by the mountains but already beginning to leech the darkness from the sky, Bredg had already been awake, listening to Noirin breathe, her head pillowed on his arm, her short hair ticking his shoulder.

Every now and then she made a slight snorting noise and then shifted, as if fighting wakefulness with all of her strength.

He’d wanted to laugh.  Or maybe not laugh. Maybe it was not laughter that filled his chest as he looked at the long stretch of her neck and thought that the quickest, most painless way to kill her would be to stab hard into the place where that tickling hair ended.  The soft place where the bone of her skull ended. 

His seax would strike hard, going upwards, destroying the home of her thoughts in one blow, where he would hear the tip of the blade chip into the top of her head, so there would be no pain, only shock and then darkness for her.

With stealth and speed learned in more raids than he could remember, he was able to leave the bed and then his house and then run in the scratching, knee-deep gorse beyond his fields to vomit, all without waking her.

How clever his feet, Bredg thought, spitting and wiping his lips, how fortunate to have such a light step.  How proud it made him...

Those same gifts of violence and taking and thievery that would let him take every day and night she would have had to come.

Then he went to feed the goats, because no matter what was happening within him that he could neither suss nor escape goats need to eat.  Pigs need to root. Horses need to stretch their legs and crop. Dinner time will come and the food must be ready. He did all of these things and let her sleep because if a thrall still slept then a new day couldn’t have started and then it could not pass and then the next day could not come.  

When all was done, and he had cleaned himself, Bredg was slightly surprised to find Noirin still asleep, even considering how late into the night he had been in her.  That feeling that he had no familiarity with came back, both the thought of how tired she must be and of what it had been like to fuck her. Since the second of these was joined by the rising of his cock he quickly undressed again and climbed in with her.  

When she jerked awake, looking about wildly the way a child does when they are startled, he knew that he was going to keep her in bed all day.  Or as close to it as could be done. 

Thank the Sly-one - bastard though He was - that Kjell was with his mother until the market ended.  

Laying with her resting against his chest, Bredg wrapped his arms about her middle and nuzzled her poor, shorn hair, imagining all of sorts of intriguing things he might do with it, were it still the same length it had been when she had set herself a-light to save those girls.  No wonder Loki craved her so, it was exactly the sort of mad gambit the God of Mischief would try Himself. “Are you sore from last night?” 

“Me?  I’ve done harder work than that,” she answered, that haughty tone that she took when offended, silvering her words with ice.

What had he done now?  “Work? Was it work then?”

“Isn’t everything a slave, a thrall,” she said the word awkwardly, trying to form it properly, “does is work for their master?”

Now Bredg was the one who spoke in ice, “And that’s what you think last night was?  Your working for me?”

“I-,” she started and then stopped again and again, and he tightened his hold on her, thinking she would like to fly away.  Then she sagged into his arms, “No. But I don’t know what you want from me. I’ve seen that Liv who was your woman, and other women that look at you.  What else could I be compared to those than a convenience? Should I lie to myself and say that you might have sought me out, were I not convenient? A true maid of all work...”

He kissed her again, before she could say anything else, and then spoke against her lips, “I sought you out,  _ auð _ r, I did.  I did not want to, but I did.  And now I have you.” 

“What does-” she started to ask and then her breath hitched and sighed out as he put his hand between her legs, letting the tips of his fingers trace over her opening whilst the palm firmly rubbed over and over her crest.  The shining oak-wood brown of her eyes disappeared into black and her mouth went soft and wet beneath his and her breath panted out and her lashes fluttered and closed. 

“Look at me,  _ auð _ r, look,” he crooned to her, until her eyes opened, vague but seeking.  He pressed harder, not wanting her to focus, not wanting her to truly see, but to let himself watch the fire build in her.

“Please stop calling me that,” she begged, even as her hips began to helplessly circle and push.

“But you are my  _ auð _ r.”  Then, before she could protest, he slid lower beneath her and let his cock enter her from below, so she lay helpless upon him, her legs splayed so she could keep her balance, leaving her entirely open to his touch, jerking up and down.

She was so hot and luscious!  He’d never had his cock so perfectly snared within any creature.  It took his teeth in her shoulder, marking the skin, to calm him enough to keep from rolling her over and fucking her like a beast.  He arched his back to touch and stroke that place within her that made women flood with want.

Noirin closed on her conclusion and he stopped, stopped all movement save using his free arm to trap her in place, unable to finish herself.  When she pushed and struggled and sobbed in frustration he whispered, his tongue licking her ear as he spoke, “Not yet,  _ auð _ r,” knowing the name would cool her just enough to let him drive her further.

When her breath started to calm, he started again, now whispering more, as his hips slid him through her clasping strait and the slicked skin of their bodies let them move with perfect ease, “I will let you come when I know you can take no more.  And I know you can take more. So much more,” he kissed her temple, her cheek, the corner of her gasping mouth. “My strong, strong girl. And then you will scream my name loudly enough to knock down the mountains of Jotunheim and turn them to naught but rubble…”

Bredg had never had such a struggle as holding back his own need.  The need to feel her clutch about him and throb and to fuck hard and hold tight enough to hurt them both.  Instead he made her rise and then fall before her peak came over and over until it seemed he had never done anything else but torture the both of them.  

When she was limp to weeping and the begging she learned would do no good had stopped, and both of them were aching in every sinew, then he freed the frenzy he had trapped in her.  The bow of her long back nearly took her off of where he had her impaled. Trying, and nearly laughing at his own clumsy desperation, to keep her around his cock, he rolled them over and drove hard over and over into her, his hands over hers, their fingers lacing without his causing it to happen.  She ground against the bed to finish herself again and he gritted his teeth at the push of her pretty ass against him. When she came the second time she did scream for him, making his name both a curse and a prayer, and he boiled over into her. 

Afterwards, he lay limp and trying not to crush the poor girl, wishing for the first time that the strange woman who had borne him had chosen to give him into  _ anyone’s _ keeping other than that of the Queen.

 

The morning was clear and already growing warm when they left the farm for the market again.  

“Didn’t you have enough of shopping, then?” she asked Bredg as they walked, eating millet bread spread with cheese rather than, as he had said, wasting time at the table.  

“Yes,” he answered shortly, not looking at her, walking a bit ahead of her the whole, long way.

Noirin made herself shrug and chew and try not to care that he was a different man today than he had been the day before.  Indeed if she had not had the mark of his strong, white teeth upon her shoulder, and the soreness between her legs, she would have thought that it was just a strangely long and wicked dream.  From when he had come home from his mother’s house to the moment, late into last night when he had licked between her legs to ‘help her sleep,’ as he had put it.

There’d been more than one man who’d warmed himself in her cunt and then the next day pretended they were barely acquainted.  In fact, they probably were barely acquainted. But what had been the day before seemed to her as if they should know each other now.

The long and now clearly to be forgotten day of being in bed, playing together, making each other moan and laugh, eating at the table side by side.  She sang for him -  _ An ghealach ar an mbonn /  Tá súil ag na cailíní a n-aisling /  Ordóidh an oíche  _ \- and he told her stories.  

He kissed her when they went to bathe.  Just kissed her and nothing more because he had said that the moon was full and high and almost as lofty as she was.  She had snorted at the idea that any creature, her least of all, could out conceit that one. Yet when he kissed her then she felt her body melt into his, not as it did when he was pleasuring her, but from the warmth of the thing itself.

But since rising again they had been little more than strangers, distant and in her case trying not to be shy.  He had told her that after the chores were done they were to go to the market again and then fetch Kjell home.

It was very quiet, with only the wind talking to her.  

“So if you’re done with spending then what are we goin-”

He cut her off, “My mother and father need me to go … to go to the mountains today.  To make an offering for my brother’s health. We’re leaving after we return Kjell home, but we’ll need a few things.”  His voice and step were brisk.

“We?” she stopped dead and then ran a bit to catch him up.  “We?”

“We.  I don’t trust you alone with Kjell as far as I could throw the two of you.”

Stung, she stayed quiet the rest of the trip to town.  Then she thought, “Well, I’d never been anywhere before here and now I’m going to see a mountain,” trying to be philosophical if she couldn’t be happy.

The crowds were less on this last day of the market.  Bredg kept her at his side, handing her his purchases - a length of smooth rope, an large oilskin - to carry in the leathern backpack he’d fitted her with that morning.  He also drifted his hands over the goods at a goldsmith’s tent and finally dickered for a silver ring, no, rather a circlet, set with clear stones, then seemed to change his mind and walked quickly away.

When they reached the campment where Kjell was staying with his mother the sun was close to its full height and it had grown oddly hot.  Hot enough that Noirin found herself looking around for the strange man that had bothered her when they’d been here before. She had meant to ask Bredg if he knew the fella, but every time she started to open her mouth she found herself saying something entirely different and not remembering what she meant to say in the first place.

Now she felt as if he were right behind her, but with each turning no one was there and Bredg grumbled that she should keep up.

The tent was much lower on goods and the last full table was overseen by a tall, fat man with a straining red tunic of heavy, expensive linen, a homely face, a perfectly kept and braided golden beard hung with carved beads, and a wide, toothy grin.  He called something over his shoulder and then offered his arm to Bredg who took it easily enough.

“Jarl.”

“Vøgg.”

Then they began to ‘yopyopyop’ at each other.  

So that was Liv’s new man?  He looked prosperous for certain, but then Bredg was a King’s son and a jarl, and wealthy, as well as being beautiful as a starry night.  

Vøgg laughed at something and then Kjell came out from the tent behind him, and he slung his arm warmly over the boy’s shoulder, saying something that made him blush.  Noirin didn’t know the words, but she could see the meaning and that he had spoken kindly of the lad and seemed fond of him.

“Here, take this before I have an arm break,” Liv said in her rough Latin, from where she now stood at Noirin’s elbow.  

She was holding the twin babies, both of them larger and older than they had seemed when in the huge cradle.  One of them had was sucking on the beads hanging from the brooches on Liv’s apron, and she passed the other one into Noirin’s arms.  “Watch him, Jorg grips like he won’t let free.”

Then she walked towards a bench in the shade of the tent, clearly expecting to be followed.

Since she had her babe, Noirin supposed that made sense and sat beside her as Liv unpinned her apron and lowered the neck of her gown to feed the one she held, “I can no longer have both at once when they hunger.  Too big.” 

The light streamed down onto her golden hair and fair skin, and she closed her eyes as her boy happily sucked, a few black curls already like clouds swirling about his little head, and Noirin was struck at how perfectly beautiful they were.  The child she held tried to grab at her hair and then looked confused when he grasped air alone.

“Ah, you wee fiend, nothing to pull there,” she said to the pretty baby in Irish, enjoying the roll of her own language across her tongue.  His eyes were just turning from his mother’s blue to his father’s green. 

“I saw you staring at my man,” Liv said, eyes still closed, face turned towards the sun. “He’s not pretty so you are shocked.”

“I, er, he seems a fine, solid fellow,” she said, embarrassed.  And so he did, though plain faced and big bellied he had a mellow voice and a sweet demeanor, nothing like most of the loud, boasting men she’d seen amongst the raiders and the town.  

“Bredg and I were together because we hated the same.  Because we wanted to tear each other’s cloths … no, clothes apart because we were the most pretty together, and to make our enemies afraid.  I … we didn’t believe in more than that. Then I met Vøgg and he was not like me. Not like Bredg. And when I knew him I did believe in more than that.  I believed in wanting him for him and not for me… I-”

Noirin didn’t know why the woman wanted to explain, but she did know what she meant.

“You love him.” 

“I loved my babies, and Kjell, and my mother when she was alive, and I thought I loved me, but I never loved any of the men, but yes, I love Vøgg.  Bredg laughed at me when I told him, and said if I wanted to leave I always could, since I was chasing … thoughts? Dreams, I was chasing something that wasn’t real and he thought I would fall into the sea after them.  I didn’t know about the babies till I was already in the Faroes. They are Vøgg’s just like Kjell is Bredg’s, you see?”

There had been plenty of fostered babies in Eire, even if this was different.  Still, everyone seemed content.

They were quiet for a time. 

“Why-” Noirin started to ask her why she was saying this, but then Liv cut her off.

“I have no hate for Soren.  Know that. But he’s cursed by Loki and Him I fear.”

There was a hush to her voice, as if afraid to speak the words, and the heat of the sun suddenly made Noirin feel just a little faint.

As if he could hear them, Bredg looked up, eyes like slits of irritation, and with a few quick steps he was at them, taking the baby from her, and ‘yopyopyoping’ at Liv.  The child fiddled with his beard and the curls where his hair escaped the braid it was in and chortled and cooed contentedly as he bounced it while tensely saying whatever he was saying.  

Still glaring at his former wife, he kissed the boy’s head and then leaned down to do the same to the other twin - who grabbed at one of his arm rings, liking the shine.  Then he gave Liv the baby and said, “We’re leaving. Let Kjell carry the pack,” to Noirin, taking her hand to pull her to her feet.

Her hand disappeared where it was wrapped by his long, calloused fingers, and she shuddered a bit at the touch of him.

He did not let go right away.  

If she was not wrong or wishing, he squeezed just a bit.  And perhaps his eyes grew softer.

Liv looked at where their hands stayed together for that moment and said something to Bredg that Noirin couldn’t understand but she could clearly hear the meow within.

“ _ Du ville være klokt å være stille _ .  _ Bare fordi du er en dāræ gjør meg ikke en _ ,” he answered back slowly, with a menace in his voice and face that Noirin had never known before, not even when he had come with fire and blade to the Priory land. 

Liv went pale and spoke no more.

He was silent and sullen the whole way back, ignoring Kjell and her in equal measure.  

Noirin tried to get Kjell to teach her a few new words as they walked.  He told her flytja was carry. Skór was shoe. Skera was cut. Then, when he said that, he looked at Bredg who would not look at him in return and fell silent.

When they arrived at the farm Bregd told her to pack food for three days on the road and that there was a cloak in the chest at the top of the ladder to the loft that she could wear since even this time of year the mountains could be cold.

When she stepped out he had brought two of the ponies to the front of the house and was finishing loading their packs.  “Can you ride?”

She looked at the friendly little horses and gulped, “No.”

He nodded, and then moved the pack from one of them to the other, “You’ll ride with me then, and we can change them time to time to save their legs.  But they’re sturdy enough.”

Jumping easily into the saddle, he stroked the pony’s mane and made soothing sounds.  Then, he bent down and taking her by the waist he pulled easily up, perching her before him and reached for the reins so his arms were about her and she didn’t know what to do with herself.

“We’ll camp at sundown, and you’ll be sore as hel,” he said, turning the pony towards the mountains, its smooth gait shockingly fast for its short legs.

When they passed Kjell, who was fixing a fence on the far edge of Bredg’s lands, he stood and waved them off.

He seemed to look sad, but surely that wasn’t so.  What boy doesn’t want to have the whole house to himself?  He’d have a grand time while they were gone, Noirin thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Noirin's lyric is from Fumblin' With the Blues by Tom Waits, who is the Tom I love the most -  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEPX1CMPiTA


	12. All Things Have Their Reason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki's fate

When they had come for Loki he had fought.

By running.

He ran to the mountains.  They found him.

He ran across the ice plains.  They followed.

He ran towards the lands of the Fire Giants, figured that Surtr would be more than happy to kill Him anyway and so changed direction at the last minute.

He ran to the sea and with a brush of magic across His skin He fell into the water with a grand splash and swam and swam and swam, going deep in the iciest waters where Ran’s hall glittered with the gold stolen from the wrecks of a thousand dead sailors.  Going to the reefs. Going to far shoals and up rivers and back into the oceans.

Sure He was safe, for once He chose caution and stayed beneath.

That business with Baldur may have been a bit _ too  _ much.  He had just known as soon as it was done that Frig was certainly squeezing Odin’s balls raw over it, determined to have her revenge on Loki even if it took until the end of the world.

Even if it ended up causing the end of the world.

Because, Loki thought to Himself - stretching for the nine millionth time in an effort to no longer have a particular part of the boulder He was bound to dig into His fucking right kidney - if it hadn’t already been His weird to kick off the Destruction of Everything Party Weekend that was going to be Ragnarok, His punishment would have been enough to make Him do it anyway.

Why did He even have kidneys?  He idly wondered as he stretched and shifted and found no relief.  Did the other gods have them? Did they need them for anything? 

The mortal who had said - or who was going to say, either way - that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result was the definition of insanity had probably been thinking of Loki at the time.

Sigyn’s hand trembled as the last drop filling the cup splashed up and out and left a smoking burn on her thumb.  “I am sorry,” she croaked out, Her voice rough from the screams of pain that She no longer gave because it now hurt more to howl than it did to burn.  She had to empty the cup. Again.

Again. 

Again.

Every time, “I am sorry.”  Turning, taking a step, the venom hit His face, the splash of the cup being emptied, and then She was back.

Every now and then, for variety, when the cup was emptied a bit of it would hit Her thin, bare foot and She would make a sound.  No longer a scream. His precious auðr, His goddess, the Victorious Girl, who He had loved to make scream until She was panting and faint with joy, could no longer scream.  

Could no longer scream.

Could barely speak.  Her musical voice that could turn Her scolding Him into a song played on a harp by a master’s hand was shredded by time and pain.

“Please, stop apologizing to Me,” He begged Her again.

Again.

Again.

But She always said She was sorry.  As if She could be faster. As if She could stop the venom.  One time She had gone a bit mad Herself and tried to rip the viper from where it hung.  A dozen bites to Her face and arms and She had hung on, even trying to tie it in a knot at one point.  When She died from the poison Her body had lay on His, limp and growing cold for days until it healed. Her black, black hair had covered His face like a veil and offered Him mercy from the snake and a mouthful of ash until She came back and picked up Her cup and resumed Her seat.

Quieter then.  

He thought of how He should have been less complacent in the water. Thor, who had been the one sent to find Him because they had been almost friends and that would hurt more, loved to fucking fish.  

Odin, who had been His brother was too much of a hypocrite to come himself so he sent Thor, who loved Loki more than the other gods did even if they had their differences.  Odin sent his son. 

Dick.

Eventually Thor had found him and the gods had taken Him by using His own fucking invention and didn’t that sting?  The net had seemed like such a good idea when He was inventing sushi but after the fact? Not so great.

If He ever got out of this cave He was going to Sukiyabashi Jiro - if it existed yet, or in whatever world He ended up in - and would eat Sigyn’s body weight in Chu-toro.  Ideally off of Sigyn’s body. Assuming Jiro-sama wouldn’t object, because He would hate to kill a man so fucking gifted.

Splash.

“Sorry.”

Turn.

Step.

Splash. 

Back.

When they caught Him He was ready.  Sick of the tides and the company of fish, really sick of spawning.  He would take His punishment. He was a big boy. It was far from the first time.  They’d sewn His mouth shut the last time, so they would have to come up with something really special for this one.

For Baldur’s sake.

And for Nanna Baldurkona who had laid down and died on her husband’s body when they had sent him to the fire.  The showoffy bitch. 

He’d done it because of Nanna, actually.

If that ninny said one more time that she was the luckiest goddess in Asgard.  That she was the most loved by her beloved her perfect her boring husband. That their son was the most whatever he was supposed to be.  

That she pitied Sigyn for being married to the most unfaithful husband in all of the realms.  Glut, Angrboda, Odin, Svaðilfar, who knew who or  _ what _ else He was fucking?  Sad that such a nice little goddess was practically raising those wild boys of Loki’s by herself whilst He was out causing trouble and seducing everyone He could just because He could.  Poor, poor Sigyn

None of that was a lie, because Nanna would _ never  _ lie.  But that hadn’t made it the truth, either.

Sigyn had laughed it off.  Because She had known who He was when She chose Him.

Loki had not laughed.  He was pissed enough about Odin not inviting Him to the last big party in Valhalla and when He crashed anyway and got put in the cheap seats that had been that.  

First, He got drunk and told the truth.  Considering how much grief He took for being the God of Lies you would think that they would have appreciated it a bit more.

Then, after hearing Nanna whisper to Skadi - _ that _ basic bitch - about how sorry she felt for Sigyn putting up with Him, He watched her gaze adoringly at Baldur and decided.

The funniest part of that was Skadi hated Him because Loki had kept her from getting to bone Baldur the Beautiful, the Boring, the Borderline Ball-less, but then Nanna wasn’t very bright and couldn’t remember much beyond how much she loved her husband and a few bad casserole recipes.

Splash.

“Sorry.”

Turn.

Step.

Splash. 

Back.

When the gods dragged Him to the cave He knew it would be his prison. As if they could hold Him.  He’d invented most of the good knots in the first place.

For reasons.

Why were the boys there, waiting at the cave?  Side by side and confused?

He couldn’t think it.  He wouldn’t think it. Even as He was bound.

Loki had begged Odin, as He had never begged for Himself, to spare them, for their mother’s sake, for their own sake’s.  That they were innocent. 

Frig said that He must feel her pain, and twice as much, or she would know no peace.

Odin said nothing but shook his head at Loki who had been His blood brother, and would not take his wife’s hand when she held hers out for him.

But he let it be done.

_ “ _ _ Now Loki was taken truceless, and was brought with them into a certain cave.  Thereupon they took three flat stones, and set them on edge and drilled a hole in each stone. Then were taken Loki's sons, Váli and Nari, the Æsir changed Váli into the form of a wolf, and he tore asunder Nari his brother. And the Æsir took his entrails and bound Loki with them over the three stones: one stands under his shoulders, the second under his loins, the third under his houghs; and those bonds were turned to iron.” _

Or so Snorri Sturluson, that Odin worshipping suck up put it.  Loki couldn’t think it. Wouldn’t think it.

Nari had had his mother’s black, black hair.

Vali had had his mother’s green, green eyes.

When they finished binding Him - or so the story went, because Loki had been blind with howling and rage and grief and remembered little of it, couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t - then Skadi hung the viper above His head and it must have been striking Him for a some time, the gods all laughing and laughing at Him wailing and struggling.

Not Thor.  

The Thunderer looked as black spirited as a storm cloud and would not look even when the other gods tried to make him turn around.

But He didn’t help, either. 

Frig was his mother, and Baldur his brother, after all…

Loki still hated him.

He hated all things from the roots of the Yggdrasil to its highest leaf on the sunniest day when it unfurled towards the light that He would never see again in the cave.

He hated and hated and hated and hated hated and hated and hated and hated hated and hated and hated and hated hated and hated and hated and hated hated and hated and hated and hated hated and hated and hated and hated hated and hated and hated and hated hated and hated and hated and hated.

The cave had started to close when there was music.

“Where is My husband?  Where are My sons?”

No.

“Sigyn…”

Ah, finally One-eye speaks… Spoke… either.

“Come away with us.  Your husband has earned His prison.”

“What are you hiding from Me?”  Her voice was what the violin was invented to sound like and could not mimic.  “Thor, where are Vali and Nari? Are they in there with Him? I want to be there, too.”

“Sigyn,” Thor’s voice was soft, “don’t look.  I-”

She did not scream then.  Not then. Rather She was still enough that all sound fell within the void of Her quietness and even the laughter of the gods stopped at the silence that was the sound of Her heart having broken.

Even Loki had fallen silent.  He could see them through the not quite sealed cave.

She turned to Odin and Frig, Her shoulders proud, “I will join Him.”

There was a clamor and Odin refused.

She spat in his one good eye.

The gods were outraged.  

“I will join Him.”

Then Loki begged again, and thrashed, and swore.  “I don’t want Her! I never wanted one of you bastards but you made me marry Her so I could be more like you!  Be tamed! Ha! She’s one of you!”

Anything to keep Her from the cave.

From being closed up.  From being locked up.

It was the only thing She was afraid of.  One night time when they had been in Jotunheim the giant Geirrod, who hated Loki had captured Them and locked Them in a great chest and Sigyn had cried Herself sick because She could not bear to be trapped so.  

“I will join Him.”  

And She turned Her back to the gods.

They stripped Her as naked as He was upon the rock, and Skadi laughingly offered Her a cup that would fit in Her palm and said maybe it would help but when they went to grab Her to force Her into the cave the Thunderer shouted louder than the other gods voices together, “ENOUGH!”

She entered with Her head high.  As the rock closed She had met Odin’s eye.  “See you at the end of all things.”

Then She sat beside Him and shuddered, but held the cup high. 

She held the cup and sang Him songs and listened to His stories.  Stories of adventures He had had before they met. That He could never have had because they were in worlds that did not exist yet.  That He would never have because She was not with Him and He swore to Himself that He would never be without Her. That no matter the world or the life or the weird He might carry in any life, They would be.

They would be because He was too selfish to be without Her.  And because no one else would be able to see how precious She was.

He watched Her wither.  It was slow. It was so slow.  But She was eroded by the cave and the poison and the screaming.  That She could not be free.

Who knew how much time had passed without.  Within there was no time. Only dripping, and splashing, and screaming, because there were no more stories He could stand to tell, having finally achieved the impossible in getting sick of the sound of His own voice.  

She had stopped being able to sing long ago.  Now and then a small hum would find its way from Her still sweet lips and Loki would close His fiery eyes and bathe in that little sound.

Just recently, if there could be recent or long ago in a place where there was no time - fucking time would still exist even where it wasn’t meant to - there had been a time where He could not make Her speak.  She was deep somewhere in Herself where He could not reach and where it seemed She could not even find Herself.

She had just stared where the opening had been, rocking and muttering and still never spilling a drop upon Him.

Loki had to free Her before there was not Sigyn left to be freed.

It had taken Him time, but He had finally found a way.

A terrible way. 

A way that shamed Him.

He had just need the girl.  The right girl. 

Well, one of the right girls.

He couldn’t take the one that was married to the horned king, or the one who was married to the mad god who pretended not to love her, or the one who had been in the unwakeable sleep because of the angry prince, and that one had ended up dying anyway.  

He couldn’t take the one who had been given Idunn’s apple when she was young by the elegant courtier, and he certainly couldn’t take the one who’d run away to the stars with the Trickster.  

He needed to find a girl that wasn’t loved yet.

For that matter He needed to find the man who didn’t love her.

Yet.

One who would not be protected with dagger, magic, tooth, nail, sword, fire, ice, and every dirty trick in the book that He had written in the first place.

Then, finally, in the past - or, again, maybe the future - He had found her. 

So soon now.

He looked at His wife.  

Her eyes were closed.

Soon.


	13. Who We Are is Different When We Are Away From Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bredg and Noirin travel to the mountains.

A long afternoon stretched before them as they rode towards the sun.  The grey and green earth was covered in a fine cloud of mist as the air grew warmer.  Here and there a purple bit of gorse or a shy yellow bloom offered some relief from the sameness, but otherwise all was solemn, save the great mountains that could be seen, white-capped and foreboding black against the dull blue sky.

But the road to the Jotunheim was easy enough beneath the ponies ambling gait.  

Less easy for Bredg was holding Noirin in place before him as they traveled.  At first, because she was frightened, squirming and trying to find something to cling to that wasn’t him.  “Stop moving about so much,” he chewed out as he tried to pull her closer so she would still, even as he steadied the now annoyed pony.  

“We’re going too fast.  And this is much too high up,” she said, trying to lean forward, like she might wrap her arms about the pony’s neck.

“I will not let you fall, you have my word,” he said, trying to not yell.  “But if you keep jumping about you’re going to irritate Rekja and maybe get us thrown.”

“Rekja?”

He gestured towards the horse, who flicked an ear at the sound of his voice.  

Noirin’s big, deep eyes were wide with alarm and he almost laughed at the sight of them, especially when she started stroking the pony’s mane, cooing, “Good Rekja, good boy…”

“He neither speaks Latin, nor is he a dog.  Now,” he pulled her back firmly against his chest, so the outside of her legs aligned with the inside of his, “just relax and let your body do what mine does and you’ll have a more comfortable ride.”  ‘Other than your lovely thighs will be burning and your sweet behind ache like you’ve had a switch taken to it,’ he thought but did not say.

“Hmmm, and isn’t that what every fella says?” she muttered, but finally he felt her spine go softer as she let just a bit of her weight rest on him.  The air rushing past them made her hair tickle his lips. Rather than annoying him there was something about the ghostly touch of it on that sensitive place, along with the smell of her and the warmth so close, and yes the suggestive rhythm of the ride that made him start to go hard.

There was a large amount of fabric from her tunic bunched between them and Bredg found himself praying that it would be enough to muffle the throb of his recently ungovernable cock as it tried tirelessly to get Noirin’s attention.

Of course it wasn’t just his cock that was the problem.  It seemed that every inch of his body desired her to heed to it.  To attend his lust.

Letting his head droop, he pressed his forehead to her hair.  Not his lust alone. All day he had found the gall that had grown in his stomach at the knowledge of what he must do to her to save Soren had moved through him, so now his liver and lungs burned as well.  

He wondered if she could forgive him in death.  If he would enter Valhalla and find her serving Odin himself, singing and when he entered the hall she would whisper in One-eye’s ear that he was the one. Glaring all of the while in that way that made him want to make her laugh.  Serious was not her way.

But no doubt she would have won the AllFather’s favor with her honey voice and speed of wit and he would find himself flung into Hel with the rest of those unworthy of a seat at Odin’s table.

Lost in thought, he was startled to hear that very voice as she hummed and sang quietly to herself.  “What song is that?”

“Nothing, just a bit of this and that.  You weren’t talking so I thought I should entertain myself.”

“It’s not for me to entertain you.”

“No.  And if it were the way you prefer to entertain me, it would be hard to manage without upsetting the horse again.  It wouldn’t be worth being thrown or having you be an even grumpier bastard to me afterwards.”

“I’ve never been thrown, and I could make it- what?”

“You could make it ‘what’?”  She half turned in the saddle and smirked at him.  Clearly she had gotten over the fear earlier, since Rekja rode like silk.

“I mean what did you call me?”  

Her shoulders fell a bit and she turned back, “Sorry, master.  I’m a terrible thrall. I called you a grumpy bastard. As you were all morning.”

Had he been?  They both fell quiet as he tried to remember.  He thought of what he had said, and how it had been said, and he knew that she was right.  The claws of the guilt he felt knowing what he must do, knowing that he would never bed her again, had made him … grumpy.

And he had been a bastard.

“I am sorry for it.”

She looked at him as if waiting.  

“Nothing more.  I was unhappy this morning and you were there.  It was unkind, especially after yesterday.”

She shrugged, a thing full of meaning, and the burning within him twisted and torqued and made something burst.  Of course she would expect no better of him.

 

That night they camped on the plains.  When she slid from the horse the sound she made, like a groan of an old man on a winter morning and a bean sidhe were mating during a windstorm made Bredg snort.  When she shot him a look he tried to stop.

“Go ahead and laugh.  I’d do it at you.”

Noirin built a fire with the bit of wood they had brought with them and Bredg cooked flatbread on a hot rock that they ate with honey and they worried dried meat with their teeth, which was more tiring than the ride.

Afterwards, he laid out their beds while she saw to the ponies.  They looked unashamed of the harm they had done to her, cropping at wild grass as innocent as you please.  “See if I sneak either of you a bit of fruit again. Traitors,” she snipped at them whilst curry combing Feti.  Rekj snuffled against her hair in a kind of apology, but she was determined to stay mad at the beast for at least the night.

Noirin asked to take the first watch, “I’m not tired, I slept so much yesterday, and I don’t think between the ground and my poor, aching bones I’ll find a position that won’t keep me up all night.”  

Besides which, the night was so pretty, the prettiest she had seen since he’d taken her from home.  A hunter’s moon stared down at the two of them. At Bredg at any rate, where his long body sprawled like sin on the bed he’d made.  He was a thing worth looking at

And his handsome face and elegant neck were licked by the golden light of the dying fire.

Lucky fire, Noirin thought.  She’d love to be giving him a good lick, even as she swore she wouldn’t let him bed her again.  Riding on with him, his body rubbing against her, the way their hips moved together, had been a misery.  The only thing that had kept her from just falling back against him and praying he would take his hands off of her waist and use them on her breasts was the pain in her legs.  Which had since spread to the rest of her body.

The thought of riding the next day made her want to weep, but she refused to give him the satisfaction.  There was enough amusement in his gaze as he watched her hobble about like a crone all night.

Damn but he was pretty when he smiled.  

He was just too much effort just as her master, let alone anything.  And the two of them together? She didn’t know why, but she could feel it in her liver that the two of them were just trouble waiting to happen.  

“We’re most likely safe here.  We’re still within the edge of my father’s lands.  That big farm we passed belongs to one of his greatest jarls, Egvald, and he keeps a sharp patrol.  But if you start to fall asleep wake me, even if the moon isn’t at the right place in the sky yet. I don’t need much sleep.”

“Neither do I,” she snorted at him.

“No, you don’t sleep enough, it’s not the same thing,” he said, sounding very certain of himself and of what he knew and didn’t know of her.  Then, when she thought he had fallen asleep he said so quiet, so deep, “Will you sing for me?”

He sounded worn.  

She thought for a moment and then remembered a song about a night with a moon like the one above.

 

 _Tar beagán níos gaire_  
_Éist le cad is gá dom a rá_  
_Díreach cosúil le leanaí ag codladh_ _  
_ D'fhéadfaimis aisling an oíche seo ar shiúl

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Soren slept.

It had not been easy to achieve. All day he had known something was wrong, and had been asking for Bredg and the girl.  He wanted to see his friend and have her sing, and when the Queen had told him that they were gone to the mountains but Bredg would be back in but a few days he had asked if he could see her then.

The Queen knew she could lie to him, as one lied to a child when there was a truth they were better not knowing.  But she feared that the day she treated him thus would be the day he would never return to himself. Instead, she told him that the girl would not be coming back from the mountain.  That the gods had other plans for her.

Soren was inconsolable, sobbing, saying that he wanted to say goodbye and that it wasn’t fair that she’d left without telling him.

When the Queen had told him that Noirin did not know that she would not be returning, he had called for a horse and said that was even less fair.

The Queen agreed, and fed him wine that had a touch of henbane in it to make him sleep.  Even so, he had raved and wept for a time before he finally let her take him to his bed. Now he turned and tossed, his addled mind and the occasional effect of the henbane together were no doubt sending him powerful and confusing dreams.

 

Þórr visited his adherent.  

Soren Mind-torn, King’s heir, Queen’s son, mighty-armed, and battle-wise but now mangled by the lash of Loki’s curse had never prayed to his god for aid in these months because he had not known he was broken.  But now, alone and fearful, wanting the brother of his heart, wanting the friend who alone was not fearful about him he prayed in his dreams.

In his dream -  where bewilderment was sanity and the thoughts of the child-like were as powerful as those of the grown - and he was heard.

Þórr stood before the walls of Asgard and on the great plain where the battle of Ragnarok would be met.  The Thunderer placed a firm hand upon Soren’s shoulder and leaned in whilst the man whispered about his brother and the woman from Eire, and because he was a god, Þórr saw their faces.  

The Loud-rider frowned and knew the truth, and asked permission of his worshipper where he might have easily taken.  

Soren, with a child’s lack of concern for himself, said yes.

When the Queen came to check her son thunder from a storm that never followed shook the foundations of her fine house.

Soren’s window was wide open and he was gone, along with the axe that he had not taken down from the hook over his bed since the night he went mad.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It would not have seemed possible to Noirin that she could hurt more the next morning that she had the night before when she had finally taken her turn at sleeping.  When she had stood up to change places with Bredg her legs had nearly given out from the stiffness and her bottom hurt like she’d been sitting _in_ the fire rather beside it.  His quick arm had shot out and kept her from falling.  

At least the bedding had been warm from his body when she finally crawled into it, falling asleep on her stomach, surrounded by the smell of him.

When the sun was just showing his face Noirin woke to the smell of small beer being warmed with herbs.  Rolling over, she yelped at the pain, “Sweet lord and savior spare me!” she shouted.

Bredg stood above her, snorting and holding a steaming cup, “I thought you had no God or gods?”  

“If He performed a miracle on my poor behind and legs I’d be happy to kneel in church every day and pray like a good girl,” she said, grimacing at the pulls and pains all through her body as she reached for the beer.  She needed something hot, the morning was that damp.

He crouched next to her, an eyebrow raised.  “There’s an image…Now finish that, then take off your hosen, lay back down and roll over.”

“I-what?” she said, after almost dropping her drink.

He pointed to a stone jar, “For your aches.”

“I can put it on myself,” she said, quickly draining the cup and stripping off the brais before she became foolishly embarrassed.  Though she still blushed. Sometimes something in him made her modest, and she’d never been bashful a day in her life

“Sure you can, but it’s better if someone else does.  Now over.”

“Sure and you aren’t just wanting to get your hands all over my arse,” she said, turning onto her stomach with more yelps.

For a moment he said and did nothing.  Then, “Maybe so, but two things can be true,” as she felt his two of his fingertips, coated with something cool and damp, touch the back of her right thigh just above her knee.  

Whatever the salve was he was putting on her it smelled a bit better than the horse liniment she’d have gotten at the Priory, and after he had covered her thigh with it he began to work it into her skin.  She didn’t know if it was a property of the medicine or his hands, but as he smoothed and soothed, and rubbed steadily harder to work the muscle her skin grew warmer and warmer.

Noirin stayed as still and as silent as she could manage, her head pillowed on her arms, afraid that something might make him stop if she moved.  It hurt like hell and it felt as good as heaven at the same time. Still, she knew she was groaning and humming. It couldn’t be helped.

He moved on to the other leg, “It’s made with corn mint and willow bark.”

His voice was oddly choked.

“Something your mother made, then?” she asked, not wanting especially to think of his mother just then, as his hand worked very slowly and intently up the inside of her leg, but feeling it might be a proper distraction for both of them.

With a grunt, he dug more seriously into her muscles, “Um, no.  I did. I have … I have some of that wisdom.”

“You’re a bard, then?”  

“No.  We don’t have them here, and I sing like a crow.  One that other crows mock.”

There was a pause and Noirin started to get up when she felt her behind cupped by two big hands, “I won’t be as rough here,” he said, voice husky and she knew that it would take almost no effort on her part to make him fuck her.  

God knew the ache between her legs was now worse than the one he had soothed out of her, and she was so wet he had to know.

But she also knew that she didn’t want those mint covered hands on her there.  That would cause some howling alright, the bad kind. So she bit into the sleeve of her tunic and they both endured the rest of his ministrations with no further talk.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Queen sent guards in several directions to find Soren, though she was certain he was following Bredg and the woman to the mountains.

Noirin.

Bredg’s woman, if he knew it yet or not.

He would never forgive himself.

She sank onto a bench, her head in her hands.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They reached the mountains in two more days.  Two more days of utter agony for both of them.  

Noirin because she couldn’t rest long enough to heal up from that first day, so she woke up stiff and creaking every day.  

Bredg because of his cock.

Made worse by every morning caring for Noirin’s hurts.

No.

It was agony because as they rode together, sipping watered mead from a not perfectly cured goat skin and nibbling dulse, she asked him to teach her the words for things.

 _Fjall_ was mountain. _Völlr_ was plain.   _Heiðir_ was hawk.  Ow was ow in all languages.  

It was agony because every evening they ate side by side, and she would shyly share herself.  She was so young and she had never been anywhere but the Priory and the little town that crouched beside it and yet when she told him about the pig that ran into the woods and raided the nun’s farm plot for a whole summer he’d never laughed so hard.  

Telling little stories and softly showing that she prefered this and not that, so he knew her even better now.  So he saw how well she already knew him, mixing just the bit of rosemary he liked in his morning beer, noting a loose tie on tunic placket that she said she’d fix when they were back on the farm.

“Like I said, I am a dab enough hand with a needle.  I already cut out the dress you sent me to buy the fabric for.  I’ll probably have enough extra to make Kjell a hat.”

It was agony because she’d never make that dress and he would go home and see the fabric in a neatly folded stack beside the window.

It was agony because the next day she fell asleep in his arms, cheek to his chest, as they rode.

It was agony because she sang to him each night.

One song was so sad he wondered where she learned it -

 _Is féidir linn a leagan amach, is féidir linn a leagan amach do na scéimhe i bhfad i gcéin_  
_Féach ar an ghrian, féachaint air ag ardú i do shúile_  
_Lig dúinn dul anois, mo charaín_  
_Socraigh do na scéimhe i bhfad i gcéin_  
_Féach an ghrian, féach é ag ardú_ _  
_ Féach é ag ardú, ag ardú i do shúile

The next made his heart race and he couldn’t sleep for thinking of it -

 _Póg mé go tapa agus is féidir leat_  
_Is croí liom le lámh trom_  
_Coróin de thorns is ea gach adharc ar maidin_  
_Banna bainise é gach anáil_  
_D'fhéadfá do chuid súl a rolladh_  
_D'fhéadfá a imirt in am_  
_D'fhéadfá an solas na gréine a chaitheamh síos_  
_Nach bhfaighidh tú dom go tapa agus is féidir leat_ _  
_ Agus gheobhaidh mé an oíche leat

Now the mountains were before them and it was too early in the day to wait.  The sun was weak but high in the sky and when they found the path he needed, following directions that the volva had only given once but he could not forget it began to mist.

“In Eire we say it’s a soft day.”

He knew that.  He’d never told her that he knew her language. That he understood every word she sang. That he’d traded in Dublin more than a dozen times if he’d done it once, and stayed in the stronghold for a bad winter once, when the Ran’s icy temper had frozen their ships in the port.

“What place are we looking for, then?  A grove? A cave?”

“I’ll know it when I see it,” he tried to keep his voice steady, and he settled her closer to him.

She sighed.

His hands shook upon the reins and before he could speak again he saw the cave, yawning like the mouth of a great beast to take them in. “I’m hoping that’s not it?” she asked, voice shaking.

“We should leave the ponies here.”

He dismounted and then gently lifted her down.  “I could stay with them, guard them and the like.  I wouldn’t be afraid. You could give me that great big knife and all.”

Her accent was getting thicker as she spoke and he wondered if she could feel the same darkness that he could.  Or if he was making her afraid, the dread leaching from his flesh into the damp air.

Bredg took her hand, holding it, looking at it for a minute, calloused and strong, scarred with cooking burns along the palm.  “Come on. This won’t take long.” He shouldered his pack and led her into the cavern.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Queen’s best guards, Karl and Ullr, caught up with Soren deep in Jotunheim.  The morning was uncanny, too still as if the misty air was felt and straw wrapped about the mountains to muffle what happened within them.

He was thin and worn, but untired.  His blue eyes were lit with fire like they had not seen since his illness had begun.  “Do not attempt to hinder me,” he growled, his voice ringing on the rock and echoing with like a hammer striking an anvil.  He hefted his waraxe, “I do not wish to harm you, but I will not be stopped.”

The men exchanged looks.  Had their prince somehow been restored, or had his madness taken on a new form.

Whilst they hesitated he charged past them, shouting, in a voice loud enough to reach a god’s ears, “LOKI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOKI SHOW YOURSELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Ah, he was still mad then.

Nimble as a goat he found a path up and then down, and as they were winded and stumbled he flew, swift as his brother, true as an arrow.  Beneath them, near to what looked like the entrance to Niflheim, two ponies, one saddled and other packed with gear, stood shaking and as if they would like to bolt.

They heard Soren growl at the sight and he ran to the cave, axe brandished.

Then there was a sound.

The sound of earth cracking and the heavens shaking, and then both crying out, in alarm, in pain, in fear.  

It was too much for the horses, who had not been hobbled and Soren had to stop and retreat back upwards to keep from being trampled as they ran wildly into the mountains.  The guards could not take advantage of his halt as the earth trembled and knocked them about.

By the time it settled Ullr had a bleeding gash on his forehead blinding him.  When he wiped his eyes he saw where the gaping hole in the earth had been there was now not rubble blocking it, but a sheer sheet of stone.  The cave was gone as if it had never been.

Soren was stopped before it, his muscles bunched and heaving.

Then, with a mighty cry, he raised his axe, striking the stone.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Noirin sings is Harvest Moon. Even though the original version is by Neil Young, I am currently in love with this version by Lord Huron :  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB6TXTP5mBE
> 
> The second is Distant Sky by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCVgsI5h9p0
> 
> The third is Kiss Me Quick by Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUwE27PcjeI  
> Kiss me quick while you still can  
> I'm a heart with a heavy hand  
> Every morning horn is a crown of thorns  
> Every breath is a wedding band  
> You could roll your eyes  
> You could play for time  
> You could weep the sunlight down  
> Won't you kiss me quick while you still can  
> And I'll find the night with you
> 
> I want to thank all of these geniuses for my theft of their words. It's in a good cause. Promise.


	14. The Cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bredg and Noirin finish their journey

There was a dripping sound ahead of them, and a light within the cave, causing the blue stone all about to glitter slightly.

Bredg walked a bit before her, the green oil lamp from his supper table raised up, adding weird shadows to the already too frightening surroundings.

Noirin fought her two instincts.  The first, the greater, was to run.  To turn and like a spring hare fleeing a wild wolf, still thin with winter, run and run, and run further still, even running til her heart gave out, because such a fate seemed less terrible than what might be in this uncanny place.

The other was to clutch upon Bredg’s arm, to hide herself behind him, to see if he had comfort to offer.  But though he had been kind and more than just kind whilst they travelled, there was something that stopped her.  Perhaps that he was her master, and not there to offer her comfort, but to make an offering for his poor, addled brother’s sake.  Perhaps that there was something in his state these last days, of distraction and almost sadness, almost like he was grieving, that grew worse with time.  

She wanted to give him his privacy, with whatever it was that hurt him.   She also wished to offer him comfort, but who was she do to so? A thrall, no matter how sweetly treated from time to time, was still a thrall.

Then she tripped over her own feet and was so startled that she took a few quick steps ahead and found herself holding some of Bredg’s tunic in her fists.

He half turned, frowning a bit in the wavering lamplight, “What?”  She was expecting his voice to be a bark, but rather it was soft.

“I’m sorry,” she let go and tried to laugh it off, “I’ve got myself all manner of frightened.  I’ve always hated caves. The one I was in the night we, ur, met? That one? It was a relief to go running out of it, even in the state I was in.  I’m being a goose, is all.”

Bredg stopped frowning, his head shook just a little bit, as did his hand holding the lamp.  “I think where we are going is just ahead,” he said, turning away from her.

The wavering of the light over his eyes made them look wet.  

 

Eventually, after the cave had narrowed alarmingly for a time, it opened again into a vast, almost perfectly round space.  The water they had heard came from here, now much louder where it fell in a thin stream into a small, luminous pool. It was warmer here, and high above, at least thirty feet or more, a shaft of sunlight found its way into the chamber.

In the center of the space was a slab of rock that looked for all of the world like a bed.

Noirin went to stand within the circle of sun that came down, the wind that blew down the stone ruffled her hair, and she was captured in the light, eyes closed and face raised, and for the first time since they had entered this monstrous place she looked unafraid.  

Bredg stared at her.  His flesh was clammy and his skull was thick with pain after days of feeling as if his body was wrapped in bonds that were steadily tightened, forcing blood to his head, leaving the rest of him numb.  Only his stomach was finally steady as he had vomited up every bit he had eaten or drunk since they had been on the road. 

Quietly.  Whilst Noirin slept.  

She opened her eyes and smiled.  Her eyes were bright. So bright they hurt his own to look at. “At least if we get trapped we have water and air.”  Then she stepped out of the light, walking towards him, “Of course, and you’re tall enough, if I stood on your shoulders I could probably climb out!”

He snorted, “And you will be sure to go for help for me.”  His voice was like a rasp cleaning rust from an old plow-blade.  No amount of coughing nor a drink from the wineskin seemed able to clear it for him.

“Are you sick?’  With a few quick steps she was near him, raising a hand to touch his brow.  “You’re all over soaked!”

He stepped back, and back again as she pursued, her eyes now thin and he refused to let her touch or comfort him, “I am just -, can you ride without me?”

“What?  What is the matter with you?  We need to make this offering and be out of this pit, you need to be home and in a proper warm bed.  Tonight I can watch all night and you can sleep, and we’re going to find some thistle to make you a tisane before hand.  Don’t look so askance, I’m a fair nurse. If I’d wanted to poison you I’ve had my chances after all.”

She tried to laugh but sounded frightened.

She should be.

“Can you ride well enough without me?” he asked again, his voice now loud.

“Yes!  If I have to go for help I-”

He shook his head, and now stepped back towards her, so they were less than a hands width apart.  He let himself be that close to her, to feel the warmth of her even through both of their clothes, to smell her hair and skin and see himself in her eyes and know that she cared for him.  Cared enough to worry, to say she would bring help rather than run. Knowing he could trust her in spite of all of the wrong he had done to her. Not merely because he had pleased her in bed, but for when they had laughed, the food they had eaten together, the way she had listened to his stories and the way he had listened to her songs.

All of those same reasons that he cared for her.  More than cared. For all of the reason he knew that without her he would find his every night unbearably long and that his every day would have no reward for surviving it.  For the first time, Bredg who had loved rarely, and then coldly and wisely - even his fool of a brother - and had laughed at every storm that threatened to send his ship to Ran’s hall, every blade that came near his throat, he who was fearless  Verða’s child, burned and trembled with fear and knew that without Noirin he would be more lonely than the moon on a night without stars.

“It is time to make the offering,” he said to her, in perfect Irish.

 

Noirin felt as if the air had fled the cave and left her gasping.  “What? What did you say?”

Bredg, who until that moment had looked as if he were going to faint dead away, walking like an old man and sounding like he was choking on a bone, suddenly moved with his usual speed and crisp grace, his voice clear.  And his words in Irish.

“I said it was time to make the offering,” he placed his pack on the ground and took her arm, pulling her towards the great slab.  

“You speak, you -”

“Irish.  You keep repeating yourself,  _ auðr _ .  My Irish is probably as good as your Latin,” when they reached the slab he grabbed her by the hips and lifted her so she was seated upon it, and she let him, suddenly limp.  Why would he not have told her? 

Because he’d enjoyed the laugh of it, no doubt, and knowing what she was saying when she cursed him in her own tongue, knowing what she’d cried out when he’d played with her body.  As that was all this had been to him, playing with the thrall. She saw that now and knew she was a fool.

Then she saw the knife.  That great seax of his, the edge as thin as vellum and wicked as Bredg’s grin.  She tried to scoot back, pushing back on the slab to be out of his reach, no longer angry, no longer afraid, because there was something fearful in his eyes.   

He easily trapped her between his knees, so she could not even thrash, now leaning over her, his body pushing her back and down.  She flailed and felt herself start to cry, “Shhh, no, no… shhhhh,” he crooned over her, the same voice he used to her in bed when coaxing her to come for him again, though she was tired.  “Don’t struggle.” 

He caged her with his arms.

Then, with a motion viper-quick, his seax licked out.  

It was so sharp it didn’t hurt.

A thin line of blood ran from her arm, staining the rock.  

Just as quick, another flash of steel and there was a matching wound on his arm.  He grabbed her and pressed the two wounds together, shouting something in Norse. Then looking at her, his eyes fierce, he said in Irish, “Your blood is now mine, I claim  _ félagskapr _ with you, Noirin of Eire.”

“You’re mad as May!” she yelled back, trying to free herself.  He squeezed the wounds together tighter, bruising her, then abruptly letting her go, letting her slip off of the stone.

“Only for you, my treasure.  Tell my brother I expect him to look after Kjell, and to see you home,” he brushed his lips over hers, and in her shock she let him.  He stepped back, raising his knife, “For you, Lie-smith.”

The point of the blade slid through wool and linen and flesh and muscle and found his heart, and when he pulled it free, twisting hard, his blood gouted onto the thirsty rock.  There was a sound like the earth cracking when he fell.

Noirin screamed. 

It was drowned out by the screaming of the rock around her.  An echoing screech came as the cave leading to the chamber closed, so only the chamber remained, surrounded by nothing but solid stone.

Noirin’s legs turned to water beneath her.  For a few minutes her mind was blasted and empty.  Her cheek rested on the dirty, cold ground, and she only lifted it when she saw Bredg’s blood had rolled down the side of the slab and was within inches of her face.  She pushed herself up to sitting.

So did Bredg.

She screamed again, and he crouched before her, seax still in his hands, his gore-slick hair hiding his face, “Well,” he said, his voice not his voice, though deep, though luscious, “I suppose that’s fair, but imagine how I feel?  I had such a good plan and he had to go and prove that he was just as tricky as I am. That’s just not kosher, now is it?”

He tapped the tip of the blade on her knee, and Noirin felt her body lock in place, no longer moving by her will.

Then, still holding the seax in his nimble fingers, he pulled apart his woolen tunic.  The great wound, weeping now only a little blood, was close before her eyes and Noirin started to retch, and then choke, still frozen.

“Sorry, sorry, give me a second, here,” he mumbled in not his voice, and then she could see his heart reknit itself, followed by layer after layer of his body until his ivory chest was whole again.  “There, all better now?”

Certain she had lost her mind, Noirin felt tears rolling down her face, “Bredg?”

He pushed back the hair, leaving a streak of blood on his cheek.  His eyes were not green, but were filled with fire, and he smiled at her, cruel, amused, and pitying.  “Sort of. If it’s any consolation, he is crazy about you, and I don’t blame him,” Loki said. “This won’t hurt.  Trust me,” he added, slitting her throat.

 

Sigyn knew Loki was gone.  

Once again He had left His body and gone out into the world.  Worlds. Different worlds, as He had tried to explain it to Her once, different worlds and different times, the trick He had taught Himself as He lay on the rock, from first simply trying to will Himself away from the pain.  

She could never go.  She lacked His seidr.  His power. His will.

Also, She had a job to do. 

When He went She hated Him, for leaving Her alone in this dark place, His body living but empty, with only the snake for company.  The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand. 

The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand.

The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand.

The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand.

The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand. The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand. The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand. The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand. The snake, and the rocks, and cup in her Hand. The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand. The snake, and the rocks, and cup in her Hand. The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand. The snake, and the rocks, and cup in Her hand.

In the cave.

When She had first seen Loki, Odin had returned to Asgard, little more than an empty plane, dotted here and there with houses half built, the gods wandering around, not sure what they were to do, only Valhalla finished and gleaming and the Valkyrie’s flying in all of the time, men being excellent at murder - sorry, war - from the earliest days.  

The Wanderer returned with the most beautiful creature in any of the Realms.  But then, Sigyn had never seen Baldur’s appeal. He was tall even amongst the gods, lean where they were broad, and His eyes burned with wanting more and more and more.  The gods hated Him at first sight, because He was different and He brought change. All gods, everywhere, like things to stay the same, it made their jobs easier.

Loki never made anything easy.

Sigyn tried to forget Him.  

He would not be forgotten, making trouble and scenes.  As Odin turned less Wanderer and more AllFather, and there were ever more rules for Asgard and the gods, Loki became wilder.  Everything He touched was damaged and then left stronger. 

The walls that surrounded them.  

Sif’s golden hair.  

Thor’s hammer.  

Odin’s spear.  

Odin’s  _ mount, _ for that matter.  

All from Loki.

He still could not please the gods.

When Odin commanded that He marry, Sigyn felt Her heart contract and shrivel, lovesick for a being that had never noticed Her, and miserable at the thought of watching as He presented some pretty, pretty, shy-eyed, easily cowed goddess who was probably afraid of Him to Odin and then filling her belly with His babies.

When She saw Him watching the younger goddesses play She was determined that just once He would see Her.  Up close He was more beautiful even, and terrifying, and smelled like sex and wine. Her whole body ached for Him, like She was freezing to death and only by stripping naked and laying down in the fire of His mad life would warm Her.

That He was tender, sometimes, She would never have guessed.  No one would. That He would lay beside Her and gently run His fingers over Her face, smiling softly.  That He would make love to Her with the urgency of a fire eating up acres of dry forest and then would feed her honey and berries, and write nonsense songs about Her eyes and say that  _ She  _ was the beautiful one.

“No, you are,” He would insist, “If I had it to do over again  _ I’d  _ be the one with those green, green eyes, and that hair like night,” He would say, and then would wrap that hair about His fist and force Her backwards, so Her throat was bared to Him and She was seemingly helpless.

“Then I’ll be a little brown wren and I’ll know whoever loves Me will only love Me for Myself alone,” she gasped out, and He laughed against Her skin, placing His free hand between Her legs.

“As long as this sopping cunt is the same,” He hissed, viciously fucking Her with His long fingers, trapping Her legs with His so she could not make Herself come.  “And this,” He added sweetly, kissing her forehead, nuzzling her temple, worshipping her, “radiant mind, all of the rest would just be the same to Me.”

“Who says it will be You that gets to love me?” She sighed out, then whined as He raised an eyebrow and stopped toying with Her.

“Are You saying You won’t love Me, then?” He asked as he settled Himself between her thighs and teased at Her with His cock, inching in, making Her whine and set Her heels into His back so She could arch to Him.

“As long as You are still as mad as a nest of snakes and more clever than a den of foxes, I don’t care about anything else.  Not even if you’re pretty. Or big,” She said, tightening her cunt about Him so He moaned in appreciation.

Stopping, raised on His arms above Her, Loki gave Her the most serious look She’d ever seen on His face, “Three things will always be true of Me, My Treasure. One,” He fucked harder into Her, pushing up from within, and thumbing Her clit much too gently, “I’ll ever be the most cunning in any life.  Two,” He bottomed out within Her, the aching bite making Her contract around Him and flood with pleasure, while he still stroked so gently it was cruel, “I will  _ always  _ be beautiful and I will  _ always _ be big.  Lucky you,” He kissed Her and swirled the pads of His fingers firmly over her, “because, three, I will find You in every one of those lives, even if I have to steal the skeins from the Norns and weave Our fates Myself.”

Then, because He could, He rubbed Her, power flowing from His fingers, making Her convulse and then slowed Her culmination so it was drawn out, the peak taking hours to finish and She wept and He continued to fuck Her, coming Himself as She finally fell away, rushing down the other side of Her pleasure. 

Now He left Her alone for hours at a time.  

With the snake, and the rocks, and cup in her hand.

She refused to ask where He had been, and He volunteered nothing.  She missed the stories He was not telling Her, and She could see Him biting His lips to keep from telling them unbidden.

She turned to empty the cup, and when She bent slightly to make sure it would run downwards instead of back towards her bare feet, singeing them for the hundredth time, a terrible pain shot through Her neck, and then something seemed to rip within Her mind.  

Darkness, true darkness, silky black and endless, not the mere gloom of the cave, crawled over Her eyes.

“Loki!”  She cried out, and then remembered He wasn’t there to hear Her.

“Loki!”  she cried out again, sitting up, holding her throat that hurt worse than the feel of the venom burning her skin.  

She was dressed!  For the first time in thousands of years there was the feel of linen on her skin, and leather on her feet.  It so overwhelmed her that for a moment she thought she was going to black out again.

She was shorter.  

She was mortal.

She was still in a fucking cave.

Loki sat next to her.  Loki in the body of a mortal.  With Loki’s pretty face and fiery eyes and absolutely drenched in blood, “Sigyn?”

She was also covered in gore.  The body she wore stank of fear and death.

“What have you done?”  

“I can explain.  But first,” he lifted her into his arms, “we both  _ really _ need a bath.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Sigyn talks about being a 'little brown wren' and 'being loved for herself alone' she is referencing how golden era actress Bette Davis - renowned for talents but not conventionally beautiful - was described in the press, and quoting a line from the Irish poet WB Yates work, For Anne Gregory -  
> 'NEVER shall a young man,  
> Thrown into despair  
> By those great honey-coloured  
> Ramparts at your ear,  
> Love you for yourself alone  
> And not your yellow hair.'  
> 'But I can get a hair-dye  
> And set such colour there,  
> Brown, or black, or carrot,  
> That young men in despair  
> May love me for myself alone  
> And not my yellow hair.'  
> 'I heard an old religious man  
> But yesternight declare  
> That he had found a text to prove  
> That only God, my dear,  
> Could love you for yourself alone  
> And not your yellow hair.' 
> 
> While not as tangled in the movement of time as Loki is, apparently Sigyn is not entirely temporally fixed either.


	15. Who Are You and Where Am I?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens next

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to by beloved, beautiful, beneficent beta Caffiend for my lovely fan art!

                                                                                                                

 

When the seax gleamed under the strange, milky light falling from the hole in the roof of the great mountain, Noirin was too deep in shock over Bredg’s self-slaying and then seeming returned from death to be any more frightened than she already was.  When he looked at her with the eyes of the man who had disturbed her so terribly in the market, and spoke to her with that man’s voice, purring along her nerves and languorous with honeyed venom, she could not move, not even to save herself from the knife.

It licked across her tense throat which she had found herself offering to him, even as her heels tried to dig into the stone and push away.

Though she did not trust him he had not lied.

It did not hurt.  Nor did it hurt when he crouched over her, his boots soaking in her blood where it gushed into a pool of Bredg’s gore, and thrust the blade up under her chin, deep into her head.  

The last sound she heard was the tip cracking against the top of her skull.

It was as if she heard a piece of wet wood breaking in a bonfire.  It was still echoing through the hollow of her chest when she found herself alive again in a body long, and strong, and strange, coiled naked on ground even colder than that she had died upon.

From above her came a slow hissing.

 

Each time Sigyn tried to push away from Loki, he held her closer to the strange body he now wore, in this body as unfairly stronger than she was as He had been in when They were gods.  The hands were tight, the arms coiled metal, and his chin dug into the back of her head. When she tried to speak he paid her no heed, simply dropping her straight down into a pool of hot, mineral thick water.

The clothing that she had enjoyed so much a few moments before now hindered her, and it took several gasping minutes to reach the surface, eyes burning, pull herself back out.  Loki was on the ground on the far side of the pond, pulling off a pair of boots, and he burst out laughing at the sight of her.

“Oh, even with that sweet little mortal face I’d know that expression anywhere, the ‘withering gaze of the goddess!’  I’ve missed it more than anything,” he tossed the gore-soaked boot away from him and as he spoke crawled slowly to her side of the pool, “waiting for you to chastise me for some bit of mischief.  To scold me for trouble that in secret made you laugh. Knowing that you wouldn’t change me even if you could, even when I drove you mad. But so stern! How it made me shiver….”

Pulling her up on to her knees, pressing her to him with the long, hard arms of his avatar in this Realm, the blood dripping from that body’s long, sky-black hair on her lips.  He whispered, “I’ve missed it more than anything - your ravenous contrapunctum when it throbs with need for me.”

Even in that mortal, unknown body, like Loki and yet not, even with that face, less perfect than his own but still with an unfair share of his beauty, Sigyn found herself hypnotized.  The heart that had been stolen for her beat hard and too fast. _It_ was afraid of him and wanted him as well.  No, not him, not precisely.

 _This_ body wanted _that_ body as badly as she had ever wanted Loki.

What had he done?  She knew it was dreadful.  

He traced a hand along her jaw, down her neck, over the wet clothing, under the wet breeches, cupping her.  His eyes closed and his head fell back with a moan, “I wish I had a god to pray to for the benison of running my fingers over your sacred snatch after so long...”

“You’re covered in blood,” she murmured, stretching forward to kiss his throat, to push hard against his hand, helplessly wanting more of him as her pleasure-starved spirit whined when he pulled away.

Lazy-eyed, he smiled down at her, while licking his gleaming wet fingers,haughty and knowing.  “Then perhaps you can clean me?”

 

Oh, his sweet goddess, slick and selkie like in his arms, as she moved away from Loki in the water whenever he tried to renew their former embrace.  But she had briefly shaken off the web of need whilst they undressed and eased their strange bodies into the pool. He’d always loved fucking in the water, where the few physical restraints that even his powers could not quite get away from all but disappeared.  

And his fire loved to flirt with being extinguished, if such a thing were even truly possible.  

“My love,” he said, diving beneath the surface to gather his Sigyn close to him.

She dove deeper into the pond, evading him again, surging up and climbing out of the water.  She was small in this form, and he was not yet comfortable in this body. Although that probably had something to do with its rightful inhabitant fighting him fang and nail for dominance.

“Now, now… You are the one who decided to vacate this perfectly tolerable body, boy.  It was free real estate,” he tried to reason with his avatar, who, being his avatar, was completely uninterested in reason, especially after Loki had killed his lover.

The response wasn’t words - which the trapped thing probably didn’t have many of since he was unable to inhabit the entirety of his brain - but rather a keening, mindless noise of grief and a deep growling and barking of a wolf who was intent on ravaging the throat of an interloper who had harmed his pack.  Which Loki readily admitted to being. Even his most intricately crafted lie couldn’t unmake the truth of what he’d done to the poor fellow and his sweet, innocent (well, innocent in this situation but deliciously experienced otherwise…) mate with her warm brown eyes and pretty, solemn mouth.

“Now, now, none of that.  I promise to leave the place in as good a shape as I found it.  Better, since I fixed that pesky cavern you carved into your chest.  Why don’t you take a nap like a good little boy whilst your primogenitor takes care of some grown up business, yes?”  That kind suggestion met with a sound that was clearly the preliterate equivalent of “fuck you to death,” so Loki sent a soothing blast of seidr through their connection, sending his manifestation in this world to sleep.

Or knocked him unconscious.  Loki couldn’t help it if he didn’t know this embodiment’s magical strength, could he?  He’d just moved in, after all, and none of this was part of his original plan so he was improvising as he went along.  He could say with all of the honesty that normally tasted like ash on his tongue that Bredg’s predicament was his own responsibility.

And either way, Loki didn’t care.  Now that he had this body and this time he was going to use every bit of it.

He followed his wife out of the water.  She was shaking the water from Noirin’s short hair - because Loki would do his treasure’s avatar the honor of her name, even if couldn’t bother with _Brad’s_ or what _ever_ his was called.  Seeing him, she frowned and opened her mouth.

He stepped in and kissed her, the hot words spilling into him, making him warm.  He teased her open and toyed tongue to tongue, their lips brushing, sliding, wet and salty.  When she tried to coil her arms about him he evaded her, only his mouth and hers meeting as he bent over her, his long lashes fluttering closed and he sighed like a virgin given their first kiss.  

He!  

Aroused but just as much starving, he sighed again, and so did she, and his heart thudded in his chest.

It had been too long!

His precious one, so near and yet so far for those centuries, those eons, and now the very bones of this misappropriated form ached for her.  

Rather, both of him for both of her.  

But first things first.  

 

“No.” Sigyn tried to pull away from the kiss.

“Yes,” he kissed her again, taking her breath.  “Yes. Please, let me have this to re-”

Sigyn waited for the joke to come.  Something about if she had knelt over his face during that time she might have had an easier time catching the poison and he could have entertained himself.  Or that if he only been able to get one hand free, or if that pervert Tyr hadn’t thought of wrapping his cock in the chains as well, that they would have had better ways to pass the time, so they should just make up for it now.

It was agony to consider doing it, and yet exactly what she might have expected from him.  She looked at him, his face so thoughtful, his eyes containing no scorn or laughter, his voice solemn.  

He took one of her hands and said, “All that kept me sane so many times was the thought of someday consecrating that altar to my suffering and the deaths of our sons, with the joy of loving you there, making you cry out in pleasure rather than weeping for me.”

“I never cried.  Not when I saw what _they_ ,” she spat the word, “had done to Vali, what they _made_ him do to Nari.  Not a tear when they bound you down.  Not when they closed the stone upon us.  I will never cry for the gods.”

“Not for them, no,” he said, pulling her to him, holding her close, cradling her head to his chest - the chest of whoever he had stolen this body from - whispering against her hair, gently rocking her.  “Never for them. For me, my love, my victorious goddess. Cry for me, just for me, please.”

It would have shocked anyone who thought they knew him, thought they were capable of understanding him, that Loki never asked Sigyn for anything.  Had never asked for her hand, she had more or less told him they would be marrying, had never asked her to be faithful, though she was, had never asked her to forgive him, though she did, never asked for anything.  

He gave, he took, he never asked.

Now he did, and she could not refuse him.  

The tears poured from her as if she had opened a vein, effortless and with no sobbing or wails.  They washed away the blood that pooled on the great rock and stained the ground. They soaked Loki’s black hair so it dripped with a soft, soft, sound.  They ran in a thin stream back the way that Noirin and Bredg had come in before, seeping between the stones, unseen by Soren and the guards.

Where they touched fresh dirt tiny, green petaled flowers grew that did not wither even in the deepest frost.

When the tears stopped, it was not that Sigyn’s pain was gone.  Her pain was hers and she would keep it forever. But it was no longer all there was to her.  With a snorting laugh, she wiped the girl’s eyes and sniffed, finding herself for the first time ever shy before Loki.  He would not allow it and kissed her again.

Loki lured her across the cold, stone floor.  Small kisses to her jaw, her neck, a touch to her hair, her back.

(Not hers, Sigyn told herself, not hers).

Then he backed away, his burning eyes narrow, veiled with black hair, his laughing mouth still so unlikely serious.  When she took a step he met her, taking her waist, spinning her as his other hand stroking her throat, caressing her chin, his thumb swiping her lips, dipping in so she found herself nipping and sucking on it.

(Not his, Sigyn told herself, not his, either.  Everything stolen).

Her body swayed and followed him and he turned them and turned them, kissing her around his own hand, turning them so they moved across the cave.  She cupped the back of his neck, snagging it, pulling him to kiss her so he arched his narrow body over her as they kept turning. She tried to stop, to have form a thought, to not be overwhelmed by him.

“Wait,” she said, swaying as she stood still, even as her skin grew painfully sensitive and her sex prickled, swelling and softening and wet.  She was dizzy and flushed, her eyes unfocused, her breath languid, “We-”

“Shhhh...”  His voice was dark, and he took her face between his hands, shoulders hunched, kissing her fiercely, with all of the power of every scream she had spared him in the dark, holding the cup above his head, her arms burning with strain and dripped poison.  He kissed her with every persuasion his silvertongue had, in perfect silence.

There was no fight in her.  She whined against him, grabbing his waist and pulling him to her.

It had been too long… His hands slid down her face, her neck, her shoulders, her arms.  He ran them softly over her breasts and she leaned back, offering them. He gathered her up against him, so her legs wrapped about his leg, her sleek sex against his hipbone.  She rubbed herself on it, breaths shaking out of her. Long fingers held her by her ass and they kissed again, and she tangled his hair to keep his mouth where it was, open, panting, sharing breath.

She rubbed harder, feeling so close, this body young and her own unseen to needs were thousands of years old.

Loki set her down, even as she tried to stay wrapped about him.

With one, mad whirl, he had them at the great slab of stone in the middle of the room, so similar to… too similar to….

She found she didn’t care.

When he sprawled back upon it, the position frighteningly familiar, but know lascivious, a knowing smile on his face.  He stroked his phallus and held her eyes. “Mount me,” he commanded, back to himself again. “Rub yourself on me. Let me be covered over with your wet, your scent, so every creature in every realm will remember forever who I truly belong to.”

Sigyn crawled up his body, stopping to rub against the hair on his calf, to run her fingers up the inside of his thighs, to nuzzle and lick and worship his cock, nipping his hip when he thought to curtail her greed.  It was an erotic inventory of all that she had been denied for so long, and of the body of the stranger that was also her husband.

She slid her overflowing cunt over it, so he arched and moaned beneath her, so his length was fitted along her slit, the head nestled against her clit, and she circled his nipples with just the tip of her tongue, gently moving her hips but not taking him in until he writhed and strained harder from the pleasure she gave than he ever had from the agony of the serpent’s venom.

“Put. Me. In. Vixen,” he gritted out.

It felt so good, his long, pretty cock so snug along her, and she sat up, balancing on his hips so the wet coming from her bathed his thighs.  She touched herself where they met, her fingertips brushing them both. The fire of his eyes burned through her then, and she convulsed, the climax tearing through her so she fell onto him, her body jerking, her mouth helplessly kissing his skin wherever she could reach.

Rolling her bonelessly over, Loki held her hip down on one side and raised her other leg over his arm and brought himself home within her.  Her eyes unfocused, Sigyn could still feel the fire of his gaze on her face, searching, taking in every micro-expression - where had she learned that term from she wondered later - every flush of color, drip of sweat, lick of her lips.  He held himself up on one arm and with his other hand pushed down on her mons so the contact within her made her pull him deeper, beg him to come with her. He undulated his hips, snake-agile and clever, and she melted further from his heat and skill and all of that particular, cruel loneliness the two of them being together and yet separated for so long evaporated as they burned.

Forcing herself up, she took him in her arms and fell back onto the stone, so they were locked together in a knot, so when she whispered close in his ear the thing they said so rarely to each other but meant always, “I love you,” he shuddered and a wrenching pleasure howled out of him.

When they could move again, Loki rolled again, so they lay on their sides facing each other.  “Well, that was a good first effort, I think. Given that we are several millennia out of practice and all,” he said, kissing her nose.  “And that we are working with inferior materials. Or,” he held up an arm and looked at it with a shake of his head, “at least I am. You are, needless to say, rather adorable if obviously less impressive.”

“He was gorgeous,” she said, pressing her nose into the hollow of his throat, letting the fine hairs there tickle her.

“Adequate,” he corrected, sighing and settling his chin onto the top of her head.

Just as they had started to slip into the first sleep that either of them had had in so very long, a hard, booming pounding came from the blocked mouth of the cave.  Loki groaned, “I don’t know if deja vu exists yet, but I’m having it.”

Even though he tried to keep her in his arm, Sigyn sat up, arms crossed over her breasts, “What is that?”

Loki waved a hand loosely about, “Oh, based on the amount of noise?  I’d guess Þórr, come to take me by the collar and drag me back to our world.  Joke’s on him, I am not wearing a shirt.”

“You mean drag us back,” she said, looking around to see if she could find enough unbloodied clothing to cover herself before the Thunderer finished bashing through the cave wall.

Loki, uncharacteristically, said nothing.

Wrapping herself in a kind of sarong made from the man’s cloak, Sigyn turned back to Loki, “I said, ‘you mean drag-’”

He hopped nimbly off of the stone and put a finger to her lips, “This was never meant to be a jailbreak, my love.  I simply meant to revoke your visitors pass.”

With a shaking hand, she moved his hand away from her mouth, “What?”

“I’m going back.  You are not.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line 'withering gaze of the goddess' is from the movie Philadelphia Story starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. Apparently Loki and Sigyn are both fans of golden era Hollywood.
> 
> Also, thanks to MjolnirMjolfar for 'Brad'


	16. No Plan Survives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family issues are discussed.

 

Noirin was not sure if she had gone mad or if the Sisters had been correct and she was in Hell for her many sins and transgressions against their god’s rather extensive list of things one should not do.  She coiled upon the cold ground in this strange, beautiful body, hugging the knees of the so long legs to the fuller chest than she was used to, feeling dirty and scratched over every inch of its skin. 

She sobbed herself sick in fear for what had become of her, and for the memory of the feeling of her life’s blood soaking through her clothing.  For grief over Bredg, knowing that she loved him despite all reason and perhaps beyond reason as well, and for knowing he was dead and yet inhabited by some monster from that cold, barren country of his.  

And with rage over him, too, understanding that he had taken her in the first place to be the one to die by his hand, that he had held and kissed and pleasured her all the while planning her death, even if he changed his mind.  Even if he gave himself to stop it, all of that had been nothing more than guilt on his part. She knew it now.

That anger froze her heart and then the pressure of the misery over his death shattered it.

Standing uncertainly, hoping to find some water to clean her eyes with, she looked around the space and saw the snake.  It was enormous, the length of a wolfhound from snout to tail tip, and thick around as birch, leering at her with wise yellow eyes.  A haze of poison floated down from its mouth making her choke and it writhed and turned where it was trapped in the stone, venom dripping and spitting from its enormous fangs.

Beneath it was a great stone plinth, draped in iron chains, the links strangely shaped and covered in frost.  Upon it was a body. 

When she looked at it , seeing what was left of its face, of its entire head, little more then pus and eaten bone and grinning teeth, the ground and darkness rushed upon her again with a hollow, echoing sound in her head.

 

Bredg was in a place where there was no darkness or light or feeling or air and he would have gone mad were it not for one thing.

There was sound.  

He heard the voice and knew it was Loki.  Condescending and jeering, robbing him of his victory and Noirin of her dear life.  Even though his body was no longer his own, having given up the right to it, he could still sense his hand raised to kill her, the scald of her gore searing his flesh, the push of the knife into her clever brain. 

She was dead, and it was as much his fault as Loki’s, no matter who’s will wielded the blade.  

He screamed with helpless fury into the emptiness.

 

_ Loki hopped nimbly off of the stone and put a finger to her lips, “This was never meant to be a jailbreak, my love.  I simply meant to revoke your visitors pass.” _

_ With a shaking hand, she moved his away from her mouth, “What?”  _

_ “I’m going back.  You are not.” _

 

Sigyn’s legs - the girl’s legs - were unsteady beneath her.  “What do you mean by that?” She squeezed his hand.

“For once I’m not engaging in wordplay or any other form of deception.  Truthfully I wasn’t meant to be here, but when this clever bastard killed himself,” he said, with a gesture towards his chest, “I was forced to step in.  All he had to do was bring his charming slave here, kill her quick and neat, and the spell I spent sooooo long craft would have taken care of itself. You would have a nice, free, if sadly mortal body for ten years?  Twenty? How long do they live now a days, anyway?”

The pounding grew louder and faster.

He lifted their joined hands and kissed her tight fingers, rubbing them against his cheek, “But no, he had to fall in love with her.  I shouldn’t have even put them together, I should have  _ known  _ what would happen, what always happens, but I thought I had enough time, you see?  And he was perfect for it, cold and efficient, and with enough seidr of his own in this magic starved realm to make the whole thing work.”

There was now a sound of stone breaking and falling, followed by a deep moan as the bones of the earth reknit themselves and of cursing in the language of the gods, followed by a low, ominous roll of thunder and a strike of lightning as the sky and the land fell into a violent disagreement.

Loki sighed, resting his - Bredg’s - forehead gently against hers.  “Do you mind if I let  _ him _ in?  It's just going to get too loud for us to hear ourselves think if I don’t.”

Sigyn wanted to say no, knowing that Þórr, unwilling jailor or not, would be the one who would be sent for Loki, or would chose to come on his own.  The only one of the gods, other than gentle Idunn who was horrified with the other Aesir and refused to leave her orchard since Vali and Nari’s murders, who had the heart to feel any guilt over what had happened to her family.  

Þórr would come if only to spare Loki and her having to see the other gods.

“Go ahead,” she said, pulling the cloak more firmly around her.  

 

Loki burned more of the seidr he had hoarded in this place where the Wall between their worlds was thin, knowing it wouldn’t matter soon.  He had meant for the spell to imbue Sigyn’s new, cute little body with gifts that it did not normally possess, and he hoped that after all of the extra work he’d had to do that there would be enough left.  He wanted her to walk out of this place with enough magic to go anywhere she wished, to do anything she chose, to be perfectly free and terrifyingly powerful.

To be as  _ He  _ had been, before…

There was a crack and the sound of the storm roared down the passage, bringing Þórr along with it.  Loki had sensed some mortals with him as well, but they had wisely chosen to guard the outside of the cave.  

Bredg’s brother Soren had willingly given the god reign over his body, so the Thunderer glowed with all of his divinity within the big, blond lunk’s rather impressive form.  Lightning chased over his sinews and lit his eyes with menace, his hair a wild corona like one of those saints they seemed to be so into in this Realm lately.

He didn’t know what they saw in them.  Quite a boring group. Here a martyr, there a martyr, everywhere another martyr.

“LOKI!”  He bellowed.

Just like old times.

“Yes, I’m here.  You know I’m here.  What is the point of all of the screaming?  Look, Sigyn, my favorite un-nephew has come to call.  Sadly we have nothing to offer but rocks. And stones.  And some dirt I believe. Make yourself at home, Storm-wise, pull up a boulder.”

He gestured about, seating himself still naked, on the ground.  He knew that the sight of him cross-legged with no pants would upset Þórr and would make it impossible for the noisy god to look directly at him.

Even petty spite was still delectable.

Þórr scowled at him, and then turned to look at Sigyn, shaking his head.  “That woman was friend to the one whose body I wear, when no one other than his family would be. I feel his unhappiness at her fate, Mistress Sigyn, though it does me good to see you free.”

Sigyn shrugged, “I am no happier to be in her body than you are to see me in it.  I would assume if she were not dead that would make three of us,” then caught the cloak as it almost fell from her breasts, causing Þórr to turn and get an eyeful of Bredg’s various charms, making him blanch and avert his eyes to the high roof of the cave.

“Loki, I have come to -”

“Take me back to my prison.  Yes, I had gathered that,” he stood in a rather graceful motion - this was a good body for a mortal - and sauntered over to Þórr, limply offering his wrists in a way that he knew would make the other god uncomfortable.  “Take me away, big boy,” he purred in a husky voice, winking broadly.

The look on Þórr’s face, both his own discomfort and the outrage of Bredg’s brother gave Loki the best laugh he’d had in centuries.  He slapped a beefy shoulder, “Sorry, sorry. But seriously, let’s go before Scaley, that’s the snake, starts to get lonely. Plus I imagine Noirin is probably confused.  I had planned to be there to explain things to her, but that got fuckered.”

Sigyn grabbed his shoulder, swinging him about, her expression grave and unsettled, “Noirin?  She still lives and you sent her to…”

“Your body.  I mean the dear girl is only twenty.  It wasn’t as if she didn’t deserve to have a few more years, my treasure, before tripping off to whichever afterlife she had earned.  I am assuming a nice one, hopefully with lots of sex and naughtiness.” He lightly cupped her cheek, “And since after this body dies you will need one to return to she can keep your own form from being stiff instead of just sort of laying there for a few decades.”

“Loki… that’s horrendous…” she gasped out, stepping away from his touch.

“I am not under any illusions on that score.  I liked her, so brave, and lusty, and what a tongue on her, just everything I like!  But though I even now can feel  _ this one’s  _ love for her raging through his veins, his brain burning at her loss, his heart jagged with pain, I would still kill worlds to see you free.  You have been losing yourself, little by little. You are not like me, a creature of madness, feeding on pique and hatred, able to fall into insanity and revel in it until the day of my vengeance.  I can lose myself and laugh, but I cannot let you be lost.”

“I don’t accept.  I won’t.” She turned to Þórr, “I am going too.”

“I won’t restore the girl,” Loki snapped.  “She will just be dead and you will be trapped and what will I have accomplished.  A conjugal visit? No, no matter how glorious, no. Either you live her life or no one does.”

Þórr growled, “You will restore Noirin.  And I will free Sigyn from the cave in her own body.  She should never have been there to begin with. She will be welcome in my hall, if she chooses not to return to yours.  I have kept it for her return, should that day come. Or she may walk where she will amongst the Realms of men or gods.”

Loki cocked his head at Þórr as he spoke against his father’s will, his expression like that of a cat watching a dog try to walk in Starbucks on his hind legs so it could a order a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream.  

It was ridiculous.  

Everyone knew chocolate was bad for dogs.  

Internally he shook his head, trying to reset his thoughts, even as he felt Bredg fighting him again.  There were no Starbucks. 

No proper hot chocolate either.  Or whipped cream.

What a benighted time.

Fucking time.

“That’s… that’s…”  It took Loki a minute to focus and recognise the sincerity and the sorrow in his Once-Friend’s voice, “Thank you.  I accept. Perhaps Vanaheim, or in the lands of the fae,” he mused. It was all he could dream of, to have Sigyn free AND herself was perfect.

Except for one thing.

“Well, I don’t.  I’m sorry if I am getting in the way of either of your plans for me, but I do not accept.  I chose my place, and I will stay there until Loki is free.”

“Treasure…” he said in a warning tone, knowing that she could be more stubborn than a fact,  

“What?”  She threw her hands up, “you expect me to leave you?  Yes, I am a little depressed these days, watching you tortured for eons, nothing to eat, no sleep, no fresh air!  It’s been a waking nightmare. But could you live your life, skipping around the Realms, dancing in fairy circles, sleeping with attractive lesser gods, knowing I was suffering alone in the dark?”

“Yes,” he lied, badly.

“Even I don’t believe that,” Þórr said.

“You have to give this woman her life back.  I don’t know anything about her, this bone house is empty of any hint of her, but if she was my avatar I owe her my sistership.”

“Sigyn,” he started again, a gagging fear tearing into his throat.  The emptiness he had seen in her had come closer to destroying him than all of his self-destructive shenanigans of his long life.  Helpless, he pulled her into his arms, “I want to curse this Bredg for his interference, for all that his death gave me this chance to fuck you again,” he murmured into her short, soft hair, whilst Þórr started humming loudly and badly.  “If I had not been here for you to argue with-”

“I would have argued with the empty air until I had my way.  I have ever been the one creature you cannot deny, my beloved.”

“But the cave… you in the cave…” he felt tears form.  He had never cried either. Not when the gods killed his precious boys, not when they trapped him who was wildfire itself and meant to be free, but now the thought of his sweet wife and her walking back into suffering with him found his knees upon the ground, and his face pressed to her, not muffling his sobs.

Let Odin hear him and sleep badly…

“You will be there.  And I will be stronger.  I just needed a break. I can do this until the end of time.”

No.  Loki thought.  No. He just needed to think.  There was a way. 

Þórr grumbled, “You could just find avatars that are already dead.  You’ve got enough of them. I know. The multiverse is littered with Loki’s.  And where Loki is, you are,” he added to Sigyn. “Now, can we go? Oh, and don’t think for a second that I’m going to forgive you for cursing poor Soren here.”

Loki was gape mouthed at Þórr.  “As if you would let me free in another form.”

The god blushed, “You’ve suffered enough, no matter my parent’s, mother’s, desire to see you in pain forever.  Baldur isn’t even that unhappy in Hel. He and Nanna have always been homebodies.”

“Then you would-”

“Free the girl Loki, show me that you can be trusted.  At least just a little.”

Loki stood and looked down at Sigyn, those strange, un-Sigyn like brown eyes bright and brilliant, and she nodded at him.

Sighing, “I have always been trustworthy to those who deserve to be trusted in turn.  Mostly. Probably. Baldur should not have been the object of my spite. Possibly.” He took one of Noirin’s delicate, calloused hands in his, toying with the fingers, “This one had best treat her like the treasure that she is, once they are together again.”  He kissed those fingers, each one, “Shall we go home, wife?”

“Yes, husband, we shall.”

 

There was a moment in which nothing happened for Bredg.

 

There was a moment in which Noirin fought to not be revived and emptiness scooped her up and pulled her away.

 

Soren spread his arms and the god within him flew free.

 

There was a dripping sound, and when Noirin woke she was being held to Bredg’s body, and he keened in her ear, his velvet voice his own again, and over his shoulder she could see Soren over his shoulder, his eyes focused and sharp for the first time in her knowing of him.  

She pushed away from both of the brothers, standing, swaying, staggering away from their astonished voices.  

She needed the sky.

  
  



	17. What Cannot Be Undone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Consequences.

Noirin lurched past the brothers, her steps finding their own way back to the mouth of the cave, her eyes not seeing, her thoughts wreathed with ice.  Her feet were bare, for she had only stopped to lift on her ruined, bloodied tunic from the ground. The gore had dried and it flaked away when she tugged it on.

Her hand went to the neck of it and then to her own.  

Her touch was so cold as she traced the unbroken skin that had been cut through deep enough to sever her pipes.  Shudders wracked her. There was pain everywhere other than her neck. It was perfect.

The inside of her legs burned with effort she had not made.  The place between them ached as it did after she had…

If she could have borne the darkness and the dank, dripping stone about her Noirin would have curled upon herself and howled to have been used thus.

Her body was like a favorite old dress that had been set aside for so long it no longer seemed familiar, but was like something borrowed from a stranger.

Two Northmen stood just outside of the mountain.  They shifted with the uncertainty of men who feared being considered cowards, but feared death more.  When they saw her walking towards them they exchanged a look and started towards her. Noirin was only barely aware of them until one of them barked that harsh, ugly, stupid _ yop-yop-yop  _ gibberish of theirs into her face, and the other put his hands upon her.

The second he grabbed her wrist, Noirin felt a rush of poisoned air through her guts and pulled, pulled and pulled, to be away, biting at his dirty skin, screaming no words, or if they were words it was in a language she did not speak.  Because could she be certain these were her thoughts? That she was even herself now.

He raised his free arm to strike her down but the halted with a gurgling noise, letting her go.  Bredg had the man’s neck in his hand and looked to be trying to make a fist, whilst Soren was waving his hands, spouting their nonsense but sounding strong and sure for the first time since she had known him.

It might have mattered to her.  Before.

Leaving them to it, Noirin ran the rest of the way to the sun and kept running.  The spooked ponies’ ears pricked, no doubt hoping for her to release them, to take them to their home from this terrible place.  

The thought of being in Bredg’s house made salt flood her mouth.  Serving and currying to one of the Sluagh, never sure that she would see the dead man or the monster with fire for eyes when she looked at his face.  Never to be sure that she wouldn’t be taken out of herself and into that Otherland, that House of Donn, again. 

Even the toughened soles of her feet, used to no shoes or bad ones, bled on the rocks as she ran and ran to be free of the shadow of the mountain.  Of  _ that  _ mountain.

When she finally fell to her knees in a field of scratchy gorse, it’s flowers long since gone so it might sleep for winter, she crossed her arms about her middle and screamed herself raw, ‘til her throat hurt more than when the blade had crossed it as tender as a liar’s kiss.

No words came from her, only the sound of having been ripped from everything and then roughly jammed back within.  Like the monster had ripped the skin and down from a swan and then thought all it would take to make it whole again was to try and fit the flesh and bone back in and toss it to the waters.

“Noirin.  Please,” Bredg’s voice from behind her, in perfect Irish with a  _ Duibhlinn _ accent as pure as fresh milk, brushed her ear over the sound of her own broken noise.  He sounded to be pleading. 

“Please what?” she rasped out at him, her voice near to gone.  Not turning to see whatever new deception she would be taken in by.

“Stop.  You’re - , you… Let’s get you warm.  You must be cold. You’re shaking, your toes are blue with it.  Let me-.” He sounded anxious. Rather, desperate. The words broke in strange places and he fell over them, his smooth tongue knotted.  The shadow of his long body covered her, bending towards her.

She stood away from him, shuddering more, turning to stare into his perfect, green eyes, and spit words at him.  

“Nothing.  I will let you nothing.  I’m your slave, ay, but you will have to beat me to death,  _ back _ to death, because I will let you nothing.  I will nothing for you. Not if I manage to stay in this body until the end of the fucking world.”

Every word hurt her throat to say.  Every flinch of his pretty face made the pain feel good.

“Then may I, my dear  _ lítit systir _ ?” Soren asked, his voice soft.  He held out his enormous cloak, lined with the fur of some great white beast.  

Noirin nodded.  She feared to speak more, that she might spit blood.  Her energy was spent, and when he covered her in the cloak, she then let him lead her away to the ponies, and then lift her and carry her the rest of the way when he saw she left red footprints in her wake.  Tired and heavy as if she were made of stone, she was still in his arms.

Bredg followed.   

 

Bredg felt the air and the sun.  When they finally stopped, free of the sight of the mountains, he felt water as he walked into a stream as cold as snow.  He barely felt it. His body had been possessed by Loki’s wildfire, now he would never be cold again. 

His  _ body _ would never cold again.

After dunking himself over and over, the dried blood on his clothing softened enough for him to pull it free and let the water take it away.  He ran his hands over his chest, his belly. The skin was unmarked. No, even more than unmarked. The thin scar left by a farmer’s lucky blow no longer traced the edge of his left hip.  The red welt from where he had broken his arm as a child and the bone had come through the skin was gone as well. 

The few deep grey hairs that he had found hiding in his hair of late had turned black again.  Not long ago his vanity would have been pleased. Not long ago, just yesterday.

Bredg dried himself roughly and dressed.  He had no spare boots and the old ones were ruined by the sheer amount of blood they had walked through, both his and hers.  But then he wasn’t cold. 

Noirin huddled in Soren’s cape, only the tips of her finger visible where she held a cup of hot wine near the campfire one of the guards had lit.  She rocked slowly, her body still shaking. Now and then he could hear a sound from her. A wail.

He crouched just outside of the circle of flickering light from the fire.  Close, should she need him.

It took all of his will to not go to her.  Even if he did, what would he do? What could he say?  The need he had to pull her against him and feel her breath on him, her heart, to know that she was warm and dry and safe would go unsatisfied, perhaps forever.  

Clearly whatever had happened to her when the Trickster had his way with them had been worse than that place within himself where he had been trapped.  Or maybe it was that he had been prepared to die. Had understood that they were being played with. Had known as much as a mortal could know. Noirin was brave.  She was strong. She did not give up. But what had happened to her…

What had happened to her? 

Soren was perfectly restored to himself, striding about, directing the making of the camp, sending one of the men ahead before it grew too late to tell their parents that both of their sons lived.  

An echo of the god’s pain made his heart clench at that thought and then let go.

But even Soren was changed.  His brother’s voice was softer, his words firm rather than rough, his actions with Noirin tender, the hand he placed upon Bredg’s shoulder one of comfort rather than a hard slap of camaraderie.  

Eventually, under the full moon and too many stars, having refused the food she was offered by the remaining guard, Noirin curled up in the cloak and seemed to sleep, though even then sounds of fear and shudders ran through her body from time to time.  He stared at her as his eyes ached, willing peace upon her.

“You need to sleep as well, brother,” Soren said, taking a seat next to him.  “You’ve had ordeals as well.”

He took the wineskin he was offered but ignored the dried meat.  Soren shrugged and ate it himself. 

“As have you,” Bredg answered, “though you seem no worse for it.”

“I was never so… thoughtful as some others I might mention.  So sensitive to the comings and goings of my own feelings and thoughts and those around me, so there was less in me to be hurt and more than a bit to be improved.”

Bredg stared at his brother’s profile as he calmly chewed.  Soren was different. 

Swallowing, Soren pointed to Noirin.  “She will recover. She’s very strong.  After all, how many months of you did she endure without a complaint?  What is a few hours of being ridden by one of the gods to that?” Soren seemed to consider how he had just put that and then stammered, “Er, um, I meant that Sigyn, of course, not-”

Bredg snorted, taking mercy on his brother.  “Oh, she complained. Often and loudly. And with great creativity.  She called me an ass’s ass one time, saving that an ass has a useful purpose and clearly _ I _ have none.  Then she sang sweet as a siren the old Greeks might have swum to.  She tended my stock and weeded the garden and made my son teach her words.  She cared for you and held my babies and …”

He could not tell him more.  

Of how she had looked when she came to her peak - wild in the midst of his trying to tame her, and then at peace resting against him until they could begin again.  That she made him dinner when it was late and she knew he would be too tired and cold to care for himself. That her eyes had as much hope as mistrust when she watched him.  Hope that maybe he saw her for who she was and not what she could do for him. 

For the first time since he was wailed at being born, Bredg cried, his body heaving with the effort of expelling all he felt and could not say.  His older brother wrapped an arm about him and let his shoulder be drenched with tears long into the night.

 

The next days were a fog of sound and movement for Noirin, punctuated by sleep and eating - for her appetite had roared back the next day.  She was hungry all of the time, as if whatever had happened in her body had left her hollow. As they travelled she gnawed on dried meat and fruits, when they stopped she ate bowl after bowl of lentils or porridge, both of which she normally loathed.  But so quickly did she eat, like fire crossing a dry field, she tasted nothing.

She could ever see Bredg from the corner of her eye, but whenever he looked to step closer she would move farther away.  Only Soren’s voice could she bear, and even then only when he spoke of the road or the coming weather or anything else of no point.

When they arrived back at Bredg’s house she let Kjell embrace her all but too tightly.

Inside, she expected to be afraid, but she simply climbed into the bed and slept again.  

Bredg’s already clever tongue must have been silver-gilt after being used by his mad god, because whatever story he spun to the King and Queen and all of their folk left Noirin free and rich with gifts.  She was still dazed but she knew the honor of having the Great Jarl and his woman come to her where she rested. 

The King’s voice was rich and stronger for having his son returned as he declared Noirin released from her thralldom, and named her a landholder in his domain.  The Queen, whose eyes had ever been cool upon her, were dappled with tears and her servants lay gold rings and furs and housegoods and who knew what else at Noirin’s still bare and healing feet.  

Or so Soren told her, for it was all just more Northman nonsense to her.

Bredg did not enter his own home for the four days that she rested there.  She might have been told where he was, but it flitted out of her mind that was consumed with only sleeping and eating and when she woke on the fifth day she stood on strong legs and looked down at herself.

Her feet were without mark.  

The dull scars on her right shoulder from a too eager beating from one of the younger novates were gone, as were those tiny ones that had peppered her chest when where her burning hair had popped and spat sparks on her.  Her flesh was sleek. 

She did not feel well.  

She had felt too much too quickly and now felt not at all.

The sun was little more than a rumor yet that morning, and Kjell still slept by the fire.  She could see her breath even in the warm, well-fitted house. Shrugging on an open fronted caftan from the pile of goods that had been left for her, she picked up bathing things and walked to the bath.

“Noirin.”

Bredg’s voice was a bell knelling through her so close that he must have been sitting against the wall of the house.  The bell rung when raiders came a-Viking. If she let it, it would wake everything that was still sleeping in her. 

She turned and saw they were close enough for their breaths that piped into the icy air mingled between them.  He stood with his legs spread, his one arm tucked up against him, with his hand cradling the place over his heart, and other reaching towards her.  There was all of soft yearning in his face and his eyes - so green even in the near darkness. His hair was dirty and tangled, his clothing soiled. She had never seen the vain jarl so undone.

“I need a bath.  So do you,” she said, turning away.

He followed, not speaking, and when she dropped her robe and stepped into the hot water she heard his breath hitch and heave.  Long strokes took her to the other side of the pool and she went about washing while he undressed and stepped in, not even flinching at the heat.  

He scrubbed as well.  Even if trying to show some humbleness and guilt by not grooming while she tried - and failed - to heal, it was clearly a relief to him.  

The sight of his beauty - the perfect gleam of his white arms, the way that his hip curved when he stood up, sluicing silvery water, and his hard cock bobbed red and ready against the fine line of hair leading from his belly to the nest of his balls - made her angry.

And hungry again.

The place between her legs had finally stopped hurting from however she had been used, and now ached.  To swim to him, to stand before him and push him down and climb upon and feel that hot phallus slid into her and work in and out like an oiled key in a ready lock, and then to hold him under the water and join him there, locking their mouths together so they only breathed each other.

He looked at her, eyes slitted with knowing, but moved no closer.  

Taking his gaze, she stood, letting him see her as well.  Then she put her hand between her legs and rubbed. Her pearl was in an agony of want and she was swollen and prickled with need as more blood flooded to make her sweeter and softer and even more ready, if more ready she could be.

Only a slight tilt of her head was needed to have him wade through to her.  The water seemed to jump out of his way and when he lifted her and fitted her down on to him, her legs locked about him, the sound that came from his thin, red lips was a prelude to speech.  Noirin covered his mouth with her hand, not wanting words nor kisses.

“Just make me come,” she hissed into his ear and though she felt his shoulders sag his cock grew even harder and his hips struck a pace like running.  

As soon as it started Noirin would have taken it back.  She felt everything too keenly, even more than she had before. As if the emotions she did not have had turned into sensitivity elsewhere and she swore that her cunt could feel every vein and ridge of his cock as each part stroked and thrust, lifting her so her tight nipples rubbed on his chest.  

It was unbearable.  Too much. Her legs and arms clutched on him, pulling him in more, close.  She bit his shoulder hard enough to bruise and mark and bleed, not wanting to give him the pleasure of making her cry out.  Not wanting him to know that she was weak before him even now.

He heaved once, and his shout of completion, of her name, boiled out from around her palm.  When he was finished she pushed away and cleaned herself again, ignoring his efforts to hold her.

She still would not listen to him, though he tried to catch her ear.  Her hand.

She had to leave.  He was not something she could stand.  Not every day. Slaves could not afford pride, but Noirin was no longer a slave.

 

That morning, Bredg went to town, the last ships having come in with supplies before winter and the need of things before they were snowed in was the only thing that could draw him away from his house whilst Noirin was still… strange.  

After what they had done, what they had been, in the dawn, he was determined to speak to her, or even more to have her speak to him.  She had fucked him with a kind of cold necessity that left him feeling more alone than before and soiled. As she must have felt. Must still feel.

To make her rail and rave at him, to take the blows of her words and her fists, anything to open the door between them.  Hate would be better than the emptiness.

When he returned to his home she was gone, along with much of the wealth she had been given, and one of his ponies.

She had left a stack of coins and a note saying it was payment for the horse and nothing else.

Coins in hand he sat and stared at nothing until Kjell came in for the night, ready for dinner.

 

 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Sluagh are the Celtic version of the undead, usually in a group.
> 
> The House of Donn is the part of the Afterlife ruled over by the god of Death in Celtic mythology. It is generally considered a waiting place for those who have not moved on to the Otherland or elsewhere.


	18. A Home is Not a Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bredg hears a story.

“That won’t work, you know,” Loki said, following behind Bredg, leaning His great height over to whisper in his ear as he gathered reinrose and mountain clover, fireweed that normally was withered by this time of year and a cupful of rain that had pooled in the hoofprint of a great elk.  The sky was darkening earlier and earlier and the fields were withering to grey as the year grew late and the days shrunk away quickly to leave so much night for months to come.

He ignored the god, who had been sitting by his fire when he had woken that morning.  He had no more substance than a dream, yet was still able to quaff a heroic quantity of the spruce ale he and Kjell had put by for winter, letting out a mighty belch and holding out golden cup that had been a gift from the king for some act of cunning that Bredg had long since forgotten and no longer cared to remember.  

Bregd didn’t care if it made him a poor host, he did not refill His cup.  Shrugging, Loki did it for Himself.

Kjell did not see Loki when he came in for the morning meal, which he ate in a sullen silence.  He had been angry with Bregd since then night before when he’d learned that  _ she _ was gone from them.  Normally Bredg wouldn’t countenance the disrespectful, begrudging way the boy had gone about his duties and spoken his answers when questioned.  But he could not blame him for it. At least Kjell had been a friend to _ her, _ had bothered to teach her words, to know her and share jokes and labors.

After a few bites, Kjell put down his spoon, “But will she come back?  Noi-”

Bredg raised a hand, “Do not say her name.  Not in the walls of my house.”

The boy picked up his spoon again and bent lower over his bowl, shoving food quickly into his mouth so he could be done and leave the table.

As they ate the god watched in amusement.  “Why don’t you want him to say her name? Noirin.  It’s a pretty name. Noirin. Are you afraid that it will be trapped in here with you every night, every cold day, her name?  It lightly panging against your head and your… other head, like a bumblebee? Noirin, Noirin, Noirin.” He stood up, loudly scraping his chair, making Kjell’s eyes go big as it seemed to move by itself.  

Loki danced about the room, slowly, gracefully, His long red hair streaming fire behind Him as He sang her name over and over.  Once or twice, even though He had a swan’s grace in His motions, He stirred the bit of cloth that hung to dry the kettle, caused the rug near the hearth to slide across the floor, and made the delicate, Roman glass vase that sat in pride of place on the shelf above the bed shudder and nearly fall. 

Kjell stared, frightened by the evidence of the god’s dance, until Bredg motioned with his head that the boy could leave, which he did at a run.  

All day, as he worked around the farm and house on the endless number of tasks of preparing for the frozen dark to come, Loki followed Bredg.   

Talking.  

Talking and talking.  Though he had not shown it much to _ her _ , Bredg himself was a great talker, the one who would always tell tales late into the night in winter to take those who listened far from the cold and the sound of the wind that was like a pack of wolves waiting for a show of weakness.  

Even with that, he wondered how Loki could stand the sound of his own voice after a while.

Then, all work done, he went to the lands beyond the border of his farm to gather what he needed for his magic.  In his bed there were strands of her hair, and he had cut free a scrap of the tunic she had worn the day before she left, which he could swear was still warm from her body.  

Fire he had in abundance.

Having collected what he needed, he turned towards home.  Loki continued talking, “As I said, that spell won’t work if you are using it to draw _ Noirin _ home, or to draw you towards her.  A goddess has worn her bones, made love in her flesh, called her sister.  If _ Noirin  _ doesn’t want to be with you there is fuck all you can do about it, son.”

Every time he said her name, Loki sang it a little, with the voice of a magpie.

Bredg’s hands squeezed, and he threw the bag he carried to the earth, rounding on the god, who backed up with a laugh, “Cannot the same be said of me?  Do I get nothing for having been ridden by you, Lie-smith? For having outwitted you?”

Loki made a wolf’s sound and showed His teeth.  Then He gently patted Bredg’s head as He might a puppy.

“Of course you do,” He stepped to the side, His voice condescending, then circling Bredg, spinning like a pillar of flame.  “The cold shall never touch your flesh, now that it has held My wildfire. Your body will not languish for years and years beyond those of your fellows.  And your penis, which was pretty good to begin with I have to admit, will be really quite so-”

Bredg turned his back to the god to return home to at least try to find her. 

“Sigyn left me once, too.”  

There was no mockery or song this time.  Only a voice much like that of any man confiding something that had caused him pain to another.  

Bredg turned back, “I have never heard that tale.”

“Of course not.  It’s private. Just for family.”

 

That night, after Kjell had asked leave to sleep at the house of his friend Eluf’s family on the promise that he would be back at dawn, Bredg prepared the components of his working whilst Loki spoke.  

“I had done… something.  I honestly can’t remember.  Not because I had done so many things that might anger Her enough to leave, though that’s certainly true.  It’s because the second I found She was gone I forgot everything else. All things fell away from Me and like Frey all I could think of was to climb to Odin’s high seat and seek the sight of Her that I longed for above all things.

“Yeah, there was no fucking way that was going to happen.  Odin was being a real bitch about something I’d done, maybe the same thing that sent Sigyn away, I don’t know and didn’t care.  When I got to the door of Valhalla,  _ Þórr  _ was waiting to eyeball block Me, which put Him on My ‘to-do’ list and maaayyy have been why I came up with that whole dressing Him up like Freya to marry that giant when We were scheming on how to get His stolen Mjolnir back later.  And what a Bridezilla He was, let Me tell you. 

“Never mind,  _ that _ story I am sure you know, because it's about the Thunderer.  

“I could not take Odin’s seat, nor would he look for me, saying that a woman has her freedom to come and go.  So she does. Every woman. But Sigyn was mine! Mine mine mine!” he said the last like a greedy child then, “Mine…” like a lost one.  To stop Himself, He shook His mane, spending sparks everywhere. Pinholes burned in the sleeve of Bredg’s tunic, singeing the careful, black silk needlework his mother had placed on the cuff, but when they touched his skin it was little more than warm.

He looked up at the god, who nodded, “You’re welcome.”

Disgusted, he turned back to his task as Loki continued.

“She was mine, and I have a lot of enemies.  You really can’t even imagine how many. I wasn’t worried about the gods trying to harm Her, she was Aesir Herself, and even if there were a LOT of Vanir who disliked me, they weren’t the vengeful types.  Nor the light elves, probably, though all elves are full malice, even the allegedly nice ones. But that left a lot of creatures. 

“So I searched.  I cast the bones and read entrails.  I dowsed, divined, scryed, took one of Her dresses to Fenris and had him try to track Her, asked Hel if any news had whispered down to Her Realm, even  Jörmungandr heard nothing.  That woman knew how to disappear.  She’s going to share that with your woman, I’m sure of it.  

“I was torn between pride at how clever My precious treasure was and tearing My hair out with dread.  And I  _ love  _ My hair.  I mean, _ look _ at it.  It’s perfect, almost as perfect as Sigyn’s.  And it’s actually softer, if I’m being honest for once.  I was so desperate I even went to Heimdall and asked him where She was.

“He really hates Me, but he did at least tell me that She was ok.  Then he gave Me this serious side eye like something was up but wouldn’t say what even after I magicked a ratking into that stupid helm of his and punched his idiot face about a dozen times.  How I hate him, but I couldn’t even take pleasure in the feel of his teeth shattering under My fist or the sound of his screaming as the rats scrabbled around his ears. He may have broken My nose.  Maybe. 

“That all got Me temporarily banned from the Bifrost, as if I needed it.”

Bredg hated the thought, but in this he could not blame Loki.  If he thought anyone knew where Noirin was and would not tell him if she was well he would go mad.  And then, having thought her name and heard it within him he did go a little mad, his hands rubbing over each other as he rocked a little, trying to push his broken guts back into his stomach.  

Loki, used to the suffering of others, went on with His story, “After a time I wandered Realm to Realm, My form changed to conform to local fashions so I could question anyone I wanted.  Hey, I’m impressed with that working, by the way, it still won’t work, but add some dried hyssop to that compound, at least your place will smell nice. 

“Lost track of time, of where I was, everything.  Then while in Niðavellir where they have no love of Me, I heard Her scream.  I heard Her scream all the way from Midgard. She screamed for Me til Her voice almost broke!  She screamed for My help...

“I didn’t need Freya’s cloak of feathers to take Me to Her at speed.  I needed to fly and so I flew, though I forgot how I did it almost as soon as I landed at Her side.  Inconvenient, that. She had gone to Midgard and started walking through the lands of those who worshipped us and then away from them.  Now She was in your Noirin’s lovely Eire, beneath a great tree, Her stomach larger than the mound of Tara, screaming her heart out as our boys were fighting Their way out of her.  Our sweet ones….”

He stopped and was still as death for a time.  Bredg’s hands stopped as well.

“I had no idea She was carrying them when She left.  She didn’t either. And I missed it all! The kicks and the caring for Her when She was sick and the talk of names and the desperate pregnancy hormones making Her horny all of the time.  What a waste! Thankfully, I’d given birth already, and having one creature with eight limbs is pretty good practice for helping Someone having two with eight between them. 

“She raved and screamed at Me and hated Me and cursed Me for making her thus, for being Me and not even feeling bad about that, always swearing that if We had other children I would be the one carrying them and on and on and on.  I agreed with everything She said. What else could I do? Hearing Her voice! Touching Her and knowing She was safe. Seeing Our sons take Their first breaths and shout at the world for being too big and noisy and bright and then starting to like the feel of waving Their fists and feet in the open air.

“She sobbed that She missed me every day and every night and when Vali finally showed His angry, beautiful face and was laid in Her arm across from His brother, Sigyn slept against My chest and I think I stayed awake for about forty-seven years.  

“When She woke, looking at the green of the hills and hearing the ocean and the sussurrus of leaves and the babes suckled with those little noises they all make, She said that it was the most beautiful place in all of the Realms and that She could think of nowhere else that She loved better.  

“I gathered Her in My arms and We all went home, though I think She would have lived happily beneath that tree forever.  We probably should have. That was probably a good idea.”

He said the last softly, sitting down to watch Bredg light the fire of his brazier, and close his eyes as he sang the words to find Noirin, his voice like a clever raven.  

 

“ Chan e an aon neach-siubhail a th 'annam   
Cò nach do dh 'fhiach na fiachan aige a phàigheadh   
Tha mi air a bhith a 'feuchainn ri slighe a leantainn a-rithist

Bha a h-uile duine agam agus an uairsin bha a 'mhòr-chuid agaibh   
Cuid agus a-nis cha robh gin dhiubh idir   
Thoir air ais mi

 

Nuair a bha an oidhche làn de chridhe   
Agus lìonadh do shùilean le deòir   
Nuair nach do bhruidhinn thu fathast fhathast   
O, thoir dhomh air ais”

 

Mist rose from the pot Bredg had placed his working in, and when he cut his hand and added his blood it created a trail in the air.  It was a coiling road for him to follow to Noirin wherever she might be. Yet it led nowhere, each time it touched the door, or a window it simply turned back unto itself like a snake, like the knotwork from her country, curling and curling and dissipating to nothingness.

He had been told.  

It did perfume the air of his house.  It smelled of Noirin’s skin when she was warm with sleep and Bredg felt it like claws in his throat.  He stood, reaching for his great cloak, though he knew he would not be cold on the path, “I’m going to the Volva.  To know if she is well. The roads are bad and its nearly winter, and she doesn’t know our language.”

“Whose fault is that?”  

Bredg’s legs failed him and he leaned his head against the wall, trying to breath.

Then Loki shook His head, as if sorry for the words.  “You have to wait for her. Sigyn’s beneficence is not to be underestimated, my valiant bride who all of the monsters love has gifts to envy.  Someday Noirin will call out to you with all of the music of her voice, but until that day you wait. And each day will weigh like a stone in your lungs.”  The god’s voice was strange. It was kind. 

“But what if she never does?”  

The Trickster fell as silent, but the wind howled, shaking the house and making the animals restive.  Bregd, already at the door and with nothing else to do went to tend them and when he returned the god was gone.

 

*I am not the only traveler   
Who has not repaid his debt   
I've been searching for a trail to follow again

I had all and then most of you   
Some and now none of you   
Take me back

When the night was full of terrors   
And your eyes were filled with tears   
When you had not touched me yet”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bredg's spell is lyrics cut from Lord Huron's The Night We Met translated into Gaelic  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtlgYxa6BMU


	19. All Roads Are Lonely When You Are Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noirin leaves, with no destination

 

Noirin had saddled and placed the packs upon Rekja’s back, the pony gently cropping his feed, no more than an ear flicking towards her as she worked with steady, knowing hands.  He was strong, and would have to pull a small sledge as well to carry those gifts she’d been given in thanks.

Her new boots, the only boots she had ever owned, creaked as she went about her business, but were beautifully crafted of the softest leather.

Having watched Bredg and then Soren fuss with the beasts on the ride to the mountains and back, she seemed to have picked up the doing of it without having tried to learn.  

Which was all to the good, because her mind was not working at all.  No rather, she refused to heed her mind which she trusted not at all.  Only her hands, her feet, her arms, her legs, and those not much. But it was her thoughts that had made her free with Bredg, her thoughts even more than her cunt.  Her cunt at least only wanted to be filled by a man, by someone she knew rather than by the Northmen’s mad god dressed up in stolen finery. 

Her thoughts wanted more.  They wanted her to crawl into Bredg’s arms and sob, to let him make her forget not just for one tryst but forever.  They wanted her to be weak and soft and let him be strong for her. They wanted him to whisper sweet, comforting nonsense and lies and tell her that she was a treasure, his treasure and that he would never let harm come to her again, that he loved her.

That he loved her as much as Loki loved Sigyn.  Because that she could feel, unfairly. The echo of that love as it was felt.  To know that someone would do anything for you, love you through the worst suffering, through the only complications of their character, through the darkness.  Where the confidence and warmth of that love had been she was left with a yawning nothingness, knowing that such things were not for likes of her. The slave. The jumped up bed-warmer.  The dupe.

And she wanted to slit Bredg’s throat and let him die whilst she watched, so he knew what it was like to die in confusion.  The other he could never know. What that cave had been and the sound of the dripping and the hiss and the sizzle of the acid burning the god’s already eaten down bone.  The stench of the venom cooking his eyes and brains, whilst she shivered in a stolen body that was so big she banged it on everything even trying to scoot away, trying to curl up and hide her eyes and ears.

When she couldn’t make it quiet she ripped great handfuls of black, black hair, hair dirty and longer than her body, great handfuls from her bleeding head, just rocking and screaming over the hiss and sizzle and trying not to breathe the fouled air.

No, she would not think of it or him or anything to do with this ugly land!  That was easy enough, so many times with the Prioress dressing her down or offering prayer for Noirin’s immortal - and oft imperilled by her actions - soul, she’d learned to drift away to nothingness in her head.  Usually in those days it was to fancies about boys, but that was not to be for her again. Instead she thought of songs, lyrics and legends of her own lost home furling and lilting so there was room for naught else.

Climbing on the pony and offering a soft chucking noise to make it set it’s hooves to the road, Noirin’s thoughts were distracted enough that she sat with perfect ease, unafraid of the height, handling the reins with a deft negligence, her seat comfortable for both her and the beast.  

As if she had done it countless times over more years than could be counted.

 

Sigyn could not create a form, nor travel as Her love could, for He was both one of the great gods and the embodiment of wildfire, which could never be entirely contained.  She was not the goddess of anything. When She had come to be amongst the other  _ Asynjur _ it was simply as another pretty thing to decorate the fields of Asgard, to hear Odin’s pronouncements, and to fight with the other gods at the end of their world. 

Her name itself a battle cry.

After She married Loki She had earned other names, many from the Aesir, many She ignored as they spoke Her weak and passive to be married to the Trickster, He-Who-Bore-Sleipnir, Lie-smith, the Jotun god who wandered and destroyed and made merry and then fixed it all.

She snorted a wild laugh.  They should all be so weak as to be with Him.  To offer Him solace when He was hated and should not have been, to speak sense to Him when He was hated and it was earned and least wanted sense.  To have the love of what could not be tamed or held, to love what could never in the world of the gods, be utterly hers. 

Loki named Her North Star and  _ Þórsdrápa  _ when they walked amongst the gods.  And _ fjársjóður  _ when He had Her writhing on His cock, when He whispered to Her in the dark that He needed Her arms to hold him and to keep Him home, when They laughed at the rest of the worlds or cried over them as well.  

Yet sometimes it seemed the most pointless thing to be a goddess and oversee nothing, to have no prayers to answer or even hear, save from Loki’s followers asking Her to ask Him for mercy.  When She said as much He told Her that She was  _ His  _ goddess alone and no one else would dare pray to Her, for He would not allow it.  

But now She heard a prayer that did not know it was a prayer.  Sung in the darkness, like a ward against a weak heart, and Her thoughts followed.  

 

Noirin could not remember all of the words to the song she was trying to sing.  

 

_ Sláintiú croí mall _ _  
_ _ Le gach focal a ligim dom _

_ Gach uair is dóigh liom go bhfuil tú chomh deacair gan mothú a bheith agat. _ _  
_ _ Tá mé ag mo dheireadh _

_ Deora tirim sa ghrian _ _  
_ _ Ní fada dúinn a bhaineann le duine ar bith.* _

 

An old fella, with long hair dirty on his shoulders and none on top had come to beg at the Abbey two summers before, during raiding time.  He’d been filthy and thin, but he’d had good gossip to share at the kitchen door of a village burned by the Northmen far down in Kerry where they didn’t land so often.  

He also claimed to have studied with one of the bards in the old days when he was a boy, and that he could play a harp still, which the head of the kitchen made certain the Prioress heard of.  His voice was still deep and strong enough to spite his age, so it was easy enough to believe him. They were deep within the hottest days of the season, when by afternoon and with work done everyone was indolent and lazy and even the Holy Sisters were bored and too warm, and too many of their eyes were staring out of their high walls at the men working their fields.

The nun’s work, of course.  Noirin’s work, and that of the other few slaves, took no rest.

They needed a distraction.  Even the Prioress, who Noirin had seen looking with a less than revenant and more than hungry eye at the younger of the two priests who came to hear confession every week.  She had a harp that had been given to her by a nobleman in thanks for prayers that had been offered for his ailing child, that seemed to catch the ear of the Blessed Virgin and save the girl.

The Prioress had said to give him hot water and see they could clean his clothes.  Noirin had flea bites on her hands and arms that she scratched to bleeding until the infirmary sister had taken pity and given her a sweet-smelling concoction of beeswax and the broadleaf from wild dent-de-leon.  

It had been a miracle like the loaves and fishes that they hadn’t fallen into ribbons under the lye scrubbing, so old and worn were they, like to held together by the dirt.  But Noirin took it on herself to whip a needle through them here and there so they wouldn’t be treated to the spindly sight of his elderly limbs if they fell apart whilst he performed.  

After the meal was served, she had snuck away from the kitchens and tucked herself with an apple and a little pot of honey in an open spot behind a heavy arras to listen.  If he were even half able to play it would be worth the betting. 

Long, spidery fingers flew fast as a winter breeze over the harp strings as he sang with a voice of silver only slightly tarnished by his age.  Noirin closed her eyes and whispered the words after each song as he sang them. She’d had the gift of remembering music all of her life and she managed to capture most of them.  The last one was sad and strange, a young woman’s song of mourning that her lover had left her bed.

Now that she wanted it, only some of the words came to her.

_ Gach uair is dóigh liom go bhfuil tú chomh deacair gan mothú a bheith agat. _ _  
_ _ Tá mé ag mo dheireadh _

She sang that again and again.  It was growing dark already and she had put the sun behind her but otherwise didn’t know where she was going other than not to the mountains again.  She offered a quiet, probably unheard prayer to the Holy Mother that she was not heading towards the mountains again. And to St. Brigid that she was not heading to the mountains again. 

“As if they’ll listen.  After what’s been done to me.  A goddess in my soul and a bastard of a god in my cunt.  If the Christ’s people are right I’m damned for sure,” she muttered to herself.  After, her head ached as she tried so hard not to think of those things. 

Still dazed by the sudden pain of it, Noirin moved through making a fire with the thin pickings from the cold plain, just long enough to give herself some hot water.  It would be too dangerous to have it in the dark.

After seeing to the pony and putting some oats in the hot water for herself, Noirin stomped out the tiny blaze and then made herself a rough pallet with one of the blankets the Queen had gifted her so she wouldn’t be straight on the ground, which could make her colder than the air would.  

Half-sleeping, half-shivering, Noirin woke, sitting up fast and trying to remember where she’d put the knife she’d packed.  There had been footsteps breaking frozen weeds like glass beneath them and by the time she remembered the knife was in one of the packs still on the pony who was tethered to a stake well out of her reach, the person had taken a cross-legged seat by her dead fire.

“I did not wish to wake you,” came a voice of calm music, speaking glass-clear Irish. “But I thought we should speak.”

Noirin had never heard that voice before but she knew it.  Her mouth recognized how it had tasted - like mulled wine and plums.  

Much as she wanted to stand and run to the pony and send it dashing into the darkness, or simply to keep running away and away, she wept.  Her body seized up so she fell to her side, holding her knees close as if she could hide herself from the goddess. The tears were mostly silent, as she could make herself unheard, but now and then her body heaved from a sob that shook her.  

Eventually, she rolled to her hands and knees and vomited up the oats and water she had.  The illness made her cold. 

“What do you want?”  Her voice was raspy with sick.  “What more can you have of me, unless you mean to send me back to your hell and stay under the sun this time.”

“To apologize for my husband.  He would never do it for Himself.  He would say He was going to, would even mean to, but somehow the subject would never come up.  But I am sorry for the ill use of your body and… and what you saw. No one knows better than I the dread of that place.  Not even Loki. He knows the pain of it, but I know the horror.”

There was silence for so long the sky started to grow light.  She could see the outline of the goddess, but She was as insubstantial as a ghost, barely visible at all, even if Her steps had had weight.  It was a sign of how afraid she already was that it frightened Noirin no more than she already was. “Why did He do that to me?” 

The shape of the woman’s head shook, “For Me.  For Himself, too, for His guilt. He needed a body for Me, since as you can see I have none outside of the cave.  Not even briefly. You are… you are Me already, in so many ways, that it was easy. But He made the mistake of underestimating Himself in a sense, as he was just as ready to save you, as He was to save Me.”

“I don’t understand,” Noirin’s body sagged, and she was too tired not to lay down again.  “Any of it.”

“Your man loves you.”

Noirin snorted wearily.  “My man. Does he? He’s not my man, no matter.  Does he love me, or does he have just enough heart to not kill me in cold blood, to let me bleed to death in a cold, dark place, after I was such an eager, warm place to lay his cock?”

“Noirin…” the goddess’s beautiful voice was rueful, “you know he does.”

“I need to sleep.”

“Please go ahead, you don’t need to be awake and you look so tired.”

“What.”

“I said you know he loves you.”

“I don’t know anything.  I don’t even know where I am going...” her voice was growing faint even to her own ears.  

Though She was barely visible in the sun, even so Noirin could see Sigyn smile, Her head cocked slightly in a gesture that reminded Noirin of Her terrifying mate, “That I think I can help you with.  Repeat after me. ‘Din majestet, jeg har et tilbud om å gjøre deg’.”

Mumbling in her sleep, Noirin did.

“Now, ‘Vashe velichestvo, u menya yest' predlozheniye sdelat' vas’”

.”Vashe velichestvo, u menya yest' predlozheniye sdelat' vas.”

“Votre majesté, j'ai une offre à vous faire.”

“Votre majesté, j'ai une offre à vous faire.”

“‘Zure maitasuna, eskaintza bat daukat zuretzat’.

“‘Zure maitasuna, eskaintza bat daukat zuretzat’.

“Sahib aljalalat , laday earad lajaelak.”

“Sahib aljalalat , laday earad lajaelak.”

And on and on until a day had passed and another night.  A brief flash of fire in the air woke Noirin slightly, thinking she saw a lick of flame tenderly touch the ghostly Sigyn on her cheek and brush through her hair, otherwise she slept.

 

The gatekeepers of the massive town let the foreign girl on the pony through without question.  They and the guards on the King’s longhouse who not only let her enter but held the door for her, when asked later how they knew they should not bar her, had nothing but confusion in their minds.  

It seemed the thing to do.  She seemed to belong there. To belong wherever she might wish to be.

With a quick stride that had her bootheels ringing on the wooden floor, she walked past those who might consider themselves her betters as if they had no more substance than dreams, straight to the dias where Hafgrim of Trondheim sat enthroned, old, and as solid as the earth.

“Who is this girl?” He called out to his men, “Who is she to walk so insolently to me?”

The girl, with a shining cap of brown hair and a pale face, took one knee and one knee only before him, holding his blue hawks’ gaze and said in the language and accent of his lands, "Your majesty, I have an offer to make you."

 

 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics Noirin sings are an Irish translation from Healin' Slow by the Banditos
> 
> *Heart healing slow  
> With every word I let go
> 
> Every time I think of you it's so hard not to feel pain  
> I'm at my end
> 
> Tears dry in the sun  
> We long belong to no one


	20. Time is Neither a Friend Nor Enemy.  It Cares Not At All.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bredg prepares to visit the hall of the new king.

The cold of the beginning of that year’s Slaughter Month and with it the start of winter was harsher than any Bredg could remember in his life.  There was no mist or clouds, but the fierceness of the sun did nothing to warm him as he finished salting the meat of the last pig he was butchering for winter.  Even the coppery, wood-scented air of the smokehouse was biting this morning, though he was as ever unbothered by it.

When he left the smokehouse he rinsed his hands with water from the rain barrel.

It was thick with slushy ice and should have burned, just as the salt had when it found its way into every little cut and break in his skin caused by the rough work of the last weeks, preparing for the coming snow.

But he knew that in an hour or so his hand would be smooth and every wound would be closed.  All age, all wear, all work would refuse to hang upon him, no matter how hard all of those things rode him.  Once he had even cut himself, a deep gash across the meaty part of his palm, to see what would happen.

There was not even the finest silvery line of scarring to show he had done so.  

Back in his house all was silence.  He had once thought he would enjoy the peace of it when Kjell was old enough to have his own homestead, and he had been proud last year when they had raised the walls for the barn of his son’s farm on the land to the west that he’d gifted to him.  

Now, he found it a weight upon him.

That night he would be expected at his brother’s feasthall.  The beginning of winter was to be celebrated with one last night of abundance.  There would be music. There would be dancing as well, later into the night. Soren would offer arm rings and other glory to his warriors, and the new Queen Frithia had a golden-haired handmaiden who would hang on his arm, making her desire for him plainer than she had ere before.  

He could take the maid, who was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen, from the hall and into the dark cold and quiet darkness, through the town and down the path to his bed.  Stripping her to her skin, there would be no part of her that would not be tasted or stroked. There was nothing he would not do to her, since he knew there was nothing she would forbid him.  After, spent and soaked, they would sleep beneath his roof, covered in his black fur cloak.

He could.

For three years Bredg’s only lover was his own hand and the dreams he had that woke him crying out for a woman that wasn’t there and never would be  Tears would leak from the corners of his eyes, his heart would thud with desolation, and his chest would heave as the last of the pleasure shook him.  

The grieving loneliness of night after night was wearing him down inside to nothing.  

Tonight he would change that.  He would take the golden girl and use her as she wanted to be used, and would fuck Noirin out of his mind.

“Ehheheheheheh…  Sure you will, B, sure you will… but just keep lying to yourself.  I love it. It’s like you’re praying to me,” he heard Loki’s preening voice in his head.  “And even if you do fuck the girl - her tits are divine, by the way, and I should know - and I’m sure her cunt is soft as silk and sweet as honeycomb on a hot day, but nothing will come of it.”

He was no longer sure if Loki was truly there when he heard Him speak now, or if it was just a madness of his own imagination.  “And if she’s dead? Dead somewhere alone on the road would you tell me, Lie-smith? Would you tell me where to find her bones that at least I might carry them home for her. _  Bás in Éirinn _ were practically the first words I heard from her...” When she had thrown herself from his ship.  When he had dragged her back. 

They had met in fire.  He had saved her from water.  They had died together and come back to life inside the earth.  And he longed for the wind to spur her heels back to him.

“She’s not dead, pretty boy.  You’d feel it if she were.”

Bredg ignored the god’s voice and what he assumed were his own, wishful thoughts.  But if she was not dead, then she was not just not here, and nothing kept him from taking another lover.  A dozen. More. As many as his cock could please, and just as many held to the account of each of his hands and his mouth.

He went to the chests in which he kept his clothing and pulled out his finest tunic made of pine colored wool so fine it could be run through a thumb ring, trimmed with black and gold silk at the hem as well as the cuff and neck.  He added black linen trousers, though it was cool for them, and leg wrappings dyed to match the tunic and show off the strength of his legs.

From his lock box he brought the armrings bestowed on him by two kings, his father and his brother, and a black leather belt with heavy gold at the buckle and the tongue.  

Then he sat upon his bed, spearing his fingers deep into the dirty hair on top of his head.  He would fuck the maid. He would. 

He could.

 

The feast hall was full by the time Bredg finished grooming and walked through the dark.  He made a point of always being amongst the last to arrive, knowing that crowds would part for him, knowing that his seat would always be waiting, and fresh mead would be poured before he he took his place.

Once he had loved the quiet that would fall, honor and fear of him stilling voices so that even in the greatest crowd the sound of his boots upon the wooden floor would be heard.  Now it seemed a pleasure from a former life. Now it was simply another thing to be expected without anticipation. Though this at least he could not blame Noirin for. His dread acclaim had begun to stale before he had even gone on the raid that found her.

Gods but the smell of too many bodies, even clean ones, and the cooked meats from the great fire in the center of the hall, and the already spilled wine and ale made him sick!  

No, it was not that.  Nor the slaps upon the back of his comrades - Thorvald, Erk, Peter the Dane, and all of the others.  Nor the raised golden cup in Soren’s hand as he saluted him from his great throne at the far end, taken since their father had been laid in the earth two winters before.  Nor the knowing smile of the golden handmaiden, who was coyly certain she would be panting beneath him tonight. Nor the happy nod of Kjell where he sat with his mother’s husband, Vogg, who normally never took his precious boats out so late in the season, but had come to feast nonetheless.

He was sick because he was sick of it.

But he went to slap his son’s shoulder and offer his hand Vogg as he had to if he did not wish to hurt Kjell’s pride or offend the massive and easy-going Faroe’s islander.  “What brings you here so late in the year? Liv’s nagging?”

Vogg laughed.  “I love her nagging.  It makes a man feel warm to know someone cares enough to make themselves unpleasant for you.”

Bredg laughed.  If that were true then Liv cared for everyone in the world.

“No.  The king has a new skald, who I had the delivering of.”

Thank Bragi!  When his father died his old scop had chosen to retire to his daughter’s farm, and since then Gerogi had been angling around Soren to take his place.  It might have seemed impossible, but his voice had actually grown worse in the last year, from all of the ‘practicing’ he constantly assaulted the ears of his cattle with.

Kjell nodded towards the end of the hall, “Uncle Soren looks impatient for you, father.  I think he wishes to honor you before the rest of the men this night.”

Of course he did.  Another gold ring. Another boast to be given.  

The quiet that he had been anticipating as he walked towards his brother’s where he sat with pretty, merry little queen Fritihia, her blue velvet covered belly swelling with their first child, was just as heavy upon him as he feared it would be.  Best to get it all over with, then he could slip away. Alone.

Bredg opened his mouth to begin his boast, when a long, silvery trill of harp music, loud and played by a sure hand, danced forth from the front corner of the hall where the king’s scop had always sat.  

Even if he was disinterested in the proceedings he could not take such an insult.

“Perhaps you did not notice that one your betters was about to speak, musician,” he called out, over the steady stream of music.  It had a strange quality, the notes waving and coiling in the air, like something from the East. Like something from the deserts to the south, but also like a piece by a bard.  

Even in that dark corner, with his head bent over the harp and his long, dark hair hiding his face, Bredg could see that the skald was expensively dressed with black leather trews and a soft, suede tunic in the French style.  High boots covered most of his long, thin legs. The toes were curled slightly upwards, like they wore them amongst the Rus. 

Still playing, the skald spoke, “No man here is my better,” in perfect, musically accented Norse.

There was a sound of shocked anger from much of the gathering.  Soren smiled at his brother and patted his Queen’s hand to stop her from taking the sharp edge of her tongue to the skald.  

Bredg’s heart felt as if it had been crumpled and dried in his chest.  Blood began to pump through it again and how it ached.

Noirin raised a hand to push her hair behind her ear, not looking at him but smiling to herself as she spoke, still playing, “Goddess-touched am I.  And a free woman. My feet have taken me to each point of the compass. My voice has brought me gold. My wits have saved my life. My laughter has made me friends.  My heart has brought me back to the hall of my friend.”

She nodded to Soren, who laughed and drank to her, and then gave his cup to a servant to fill and take to her.  

Still playing, she drank deep. 

“Shall I sing you a song, King’s son?  King’s brother?” She looked up at him, her eyes bright with mischief.  

She was still thin, but supple now and strong looking.   Her tentative smile now a proud smirk, and though she looked a bit weary with shadows beneath her eyes, it was road-tiredness.  A good tired.

He wanted to strangle her.  

“Is it a good song?” he asked coldly, taking the King’s cup that had now been delivered to him, still holding her gaze.

“The best.  But I don’t sing for free, jarl.”

“What’s your price for one song then?”  

She cocked her head, as if thinking, then she turned so both of her feet were on the ground, leaning forward, as if they were the only ones in the hall, “I’ll be having the rest of your life, then.  If you want the song. If you think it’s good enough. If you don’t, well, then you need to decide what I owe you for having to hear it.”

He drained the cup.  The wine was made with grapes and heated with mace and pepper.  It was sweet and had a bite.

“Then sing.”

She nodded, and bending over the harp again.

 

“Tá sí benediction   
Tá sí buailte ortsa   
Is í an nasc fhréamh í   
Tá sí ag nascadh leis   
Seo a théann mé agus níl a fhios agam cén fáth   
Sreabhadh amhlaidh gan stad   
An bhféadfadh sé go bhfuil sé ag cur ormsa   
Tá mé ag damhsa cosnochta   
Headin 'le haghaidh casadh   
Tarraingíonn ceol éigin aisteach orm   
Déanann sé teacht orm cosúil le roinnt banlaoch   
Tá sí sublimation   
Tá sí mar bhunúsach ortsa   
Tá sí ag díriú ar   
An té a roghnaíonn sí  *”

 

After the last word slipped from her mouth, Noirin put the flat of her hand against the strings of her harp.  They trembled. 

So did she.

Maybe this was a terrible idea after all, she thought, setting her harp in its case.

After what seemed like a thousand years, she heard Bredg walk towards her, each step firm and ringing on the wooden floor.  

He leaned over her, looming and dark and beautiful.

“Good enough,” he said, putting a hand to her cheek.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Noirin's song is from Dancing Barefoot by the incomparable Patti Smith, whose 1970s looks were my first mental model for Noirin/Nora's. The song is one that makes me think of Loki and Sigyn as well as Bredg and Noirin.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmDr9L1p6wA


	21. Regrets are for those who look behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened in the three years Noirin was away.

In Asgard the gods slept badly, though they knew not why.

Frigga could find no peace, waking over and over, and when she did nod off there was naught but torment for her.  She was drowning in the blood of Sigyn’s children. Loki’s children. When the dawn traced over her closed eyes she thought she heard Gullinkambi crow where he perched upon the roof of Odin’s meadhall and that Ragnarök was nigh.  When she woke and knew it was not true, she rose from the AllFather’s bed, tucking a robe about her shoulders and to watch the dawn over the golden roof and missed her child, her Baldr as she had every day since his death.

“I went too far,” she thought, centuries and more too late to save Vali who had his mother’s black hair and sweet voice, or Narfi who would flirt with any creature, winking with eyes of leaf green.  She thought of Sigyn’s face and Loki’s too. Loki who watched one son kill another, who was killed in his turn, having already lost two sons, one to binding and another to the cold of the ocean. And even the Queen of the Gods felt remorse.

 

Tyr woke with his hand in terrible pain.  A pain that gave him the greatest joy, to know that his memory of betraying the great wolf who had been his friend and companion for so long and the loss of his sword-arm were not but a nightmare

His hand was still gone. 

He had still betrayed Fenrisúlfr who had been his friend.

 

Thor held the horn of mead that Útgarða-Loki had placed in his hand and prepared again to try and fail to drink the ocean dry.  The giant’s nurse, Elli, doddered over her knitting needles, awaiting their wrestling match to come, where she would soundly trounce him.  Beside the fire a drowsy grey cat waited for him to try and lift it so no soft paw remained upon the hearth. 

He turned and saw Loki who gorging himself upon a meal, trying to beat Logi, wildfire itself, look up at him and wink.  The Thunderer threw back his head and laughed, tears leaking from the corner of his eyes, for how he missed those days when he and the Lie-smith walked together, forever in and out of trouble, as this he knew for little more than a dream.

 

Sif dreamt her hair all fell out in a golden rain that made the earth bleed.

Freya dreamt Brisingamen coiled tighter and tighter about her, first choking her in a way that pleased, a way that only one lover had ever known she liked, and then tighter and tighter and tighter…

Skadi, who had no subtlety and so wasn’t worth wasting any on, and who had come up with that business with the viper after all, dreamt that she was being straight up hacked to death over and over again

Heimdal did not sleep.  Which probably explained why he was such a massive tool, Loki thought, his spirit having tripped back to Asgard for one last visit before he played his greatest trick of all.

Last he visited Odin.  When he had been more the Wanderer and less the All Father he had loved Loki and Loki had loved him.  Brothers, lovers, the dearest of friends, but time had turned his mischievous friend into a staid king who refused to see the humor in being wrong, the joy in trouble, the pleasure in up ending the feast table and dancing in the wreckage.  

And Loki had seen the shallowness of Odin’s heart.  Of all of the gods.

Odin did not dream.  He had everything he wanted.  And someday Loki would take every bit of it from him and laugh.  But not now. Perhaps not for a very long time to come. For he had other places to see, other people to be, and so did his wife.

“Goodbye, One Eye.  See you at the end of all things,” he whispered into Odin’s ear and then, catching on a breeze, was gone.

 

Noirin had gone to Constantinople, to the court of Basil II, the great emperor who lived plainly, dressed in the darkest purple, laughed loudly and loved war.  On the road, travelling with a band of Rus who wanted to offer him their swords for gold, she had learned new songs and met a dying man from Eire in Sofia, the great old city of the Bulgars.  She had carried the voice of the King of Trondheim and a bag full of tribute, for an alliance that wanted making.

How he had come to be there no one knew, but he lived in one room of stone, eating a bowl of soup every day given by a neighbor woman whose children in earlier days he had taught letters to.  But his wits had wandered and he had forgotten all tongues but that of his childhood.

The woman had heard Noirin haggling over a basket of pears and recognized her accent.  In a confused fall of words in a language that Noirin learned as she heard it, thanks to Sigyn’s blessing, she begged her to come and offer an old countryman of her’s a few words of comfort.

He had wept at the sound of her voice and she told him stories from home - of the Prioress and her haughty ways.  Of the farmer who was kicked by the cow. Of the tinker who had taught the pig to dance. Of the sound of the ocean on the sand and the way the air went soft with rain.  She sang him seven songs. When she had to leave him, her companions growing impatient for the road, he had gone under his bed and pulled out a bundle of cloth. In it, swaddled like a loved child, was a harp, old and yet still pure of tone.

“It belonged to my uncle.  He was a true bard. Not just a _ filí _ , praising the new god to make the priests happy, but one whose teachers could trace their roots to great bards of Tara.  I could never make it sing, but you take it girl. Play good songs on her, show her the world, and then take her home with you.”

Noirin looked at the sweetly curved wood, unadorned but beautiful in its shape, “I don’t have a home.”

The old man grinned toothlessly at her, “Ah, sure you do, sure you do.  I can see it on you. You just have to remember where it is.”

She returned to the road and sang at night by the fire for the Rus, teaching herself the strings.   Once or twice one of the men sidled up to her, their great beards hung with beads, their sloe dark eyes entrancing, and flirted with her, offering all manner of pleasure and wine for her favors.  But she took none of them to bed. She was afraid, but not of them.

The night air and the road had healed her, but not cured her.

 

Noirin had gone to Provença, to learn to speak the Occitan from the singers there.  Towns sat on hills, bleaching white under the hot sun and cloudless skies. The fields were filled with thyme and rosemary and the air smelled sweet when it was trod underfoot.

A band of performers moved from hill to hill, bringing music and amusement and a little trouble to each stop.  Noirin was in Venasque when they arrived. They played in the square, tumbling, juggling, making faces, dancing, picking pockets.  Trouble started, as it always will, when one of the acrobats grew too fresh with a local girl. Too fresh for her beaux’s liking, not for hers, the little, apple cheeked brunette seemed more than happy for his attentions, and even happier for the ensuing fight that was brewing over her favors.

The leader of the troop started to sing, a full, swooning baritone filling the open air.  Noirin leaned in a tower window across the square, listening. She loved that his voice was so deep and sweet, he was tall, broad shouldered, slim hipped, and his golden beard was neatly kept.  The distraction only worked for a moment. She looked at the fight starting to brew again and sang out towards blonde trouvier, hoping he could follow the language since her Occitan still wasn’t musical -

“Diuen que som joves i que no sabem   
No anem a descobrir fins que creixem   
Bé, no sé si tot això és cert   
"Perquè em vas aconseguir, i bebè t'he fet"

Everyone stopped, looking around for her, save the other singer who spotted her immediately.  He gave a jaunty bow and answered -

“Noia   
Et vaig tenir nena   
Et vaig tenir nena   
Diuen que el nostre amor no pagarà el lloguer   
Abans que es guanyi, tots els nostres diners s'han gastat   
Suposo que això és així, no tenim una trama   
Però almenys estic segur de totes les coses que tenim”

She laughed, and the crowd stilled to listen, as they joined together -

“Noia   
Et vaig tenir nena   
Et vaig tenir nena   
Tinc flors a la primavera   
Et vaig aconseguir portar el meu anell   
I quan estic trist, sou un pallasso   
I si tinc por, sempre estàs al voltant   
No deixis que diuen que el teu cabell és massa llarg   
"Perquè no m'importa, amb tu no puc anar malament   
A continuació, posa la teva mà petita a la meva   
No hi ha muntanya o muntanya que no podem pujar   
Noia   
Et vaig tenir nena   
Et vaig tenir nena”

 

That night she lay in a field of purple with him as they watched the stars and he told her about the farm he had grown up on, and his sister the cheesemaker, and his brother the shepard, and how he had never wanted to be tied to the land.  His name was Roul, and she let him kiss her just once.

He gave her a rueful smile and bowed over her hand.  “I taste love on your lips anyway, dolça nena, but not for me.”  He walked away, between fragrant fields of lavender, whistling.

She wasn’t afraid, but she still had no home to go to.

 

Noirin went to the Levant, and sat in the marketplace, swathed in white cloth and watched surgeons repair injuries that would have meant sure and horrible death in the part of the world she was from.  She heard the call from the minarets and watched woman dance to a kind of music that wavered and swam upon night air like a shark moved effortlessly through water.

The heat baked her bones and she learned to sleep when the sun was high.

Noirin went to Paris and listened to the choirs in the cathedral, and watched the King and his children take mass.  She went to the Left Bank and sat over cups of sour wine with students from the collection of colleges talk nonsense and magic all night long.

Her Latin was better than most of theirs.

 

Noirin went to the Taiga and nearly froze to death, blessing of Sigyn or not, and slept for six weeks in the strange hut of a mad old witch.  There she farmed all day and stitched red thread into knotwork embroidery around the cuffs and collar and hem of the hag’s best blue dress. 

In return she learned just one line of a song,   _ Пожалейте меня Я слышу, как ветер дует на север _ , that would keep her warm in any weather.

“Come back any time, маленький вор.  You always do,” the hag said as she left.  

Noirin didn’t know what she meant, but she had her words.

 

She collected fortunes and lost some and sent others away.  She took no lovers, though she flirted with many and regretted her empty bed once or twice.  Languages fell into her mind as easily as berries fell into her hand when summer came and made the trees fat with sugar.

Then, one night in the wrecked house of a long-dead wealthy Roman family, in the ruins of that once greatest of cities, she woke from a dream.  Her face was wet with tears, and she knew that somehow they were not her own.

They were Bredg’s, tasting not just of salt, but of his heart’s blood.  He still longed for her, when she was sure she had been if not quite forgotten, then turned into a memory that could be laid aside.  She heard that Sorin was king now. 

She wondered if he needed a new skald to sing his glory.

It was late in the year to go North.  

She put on her sturdy, elegant boots, and started heading that way, Baba Yaga’s song ready on her lips, should the weather turn against her.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't find an English to Occitan translator online, so the song Noirin sings in Provence - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BERd61bDY7k - is in Catalan, which is a closely related language.


	22. Journeys End at Lovers Meeting, or So They Say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noirin and Bredg take a walk in the dark, Loki and Sigyn do as well.

Bredg did not speak to Noirin after they left his brother’s hall.  They walked in the darkness in silence, with her a little behind since the path had changed a bit in the three years she had been gone.

He recalled a legend from the Greeks, of a man who went to the afterlife to win back his dead bride.  He had played a lyre and sung, and even the Queen of the Dead wept at his sadness so he was given a chance to lead his love from Hel and back to his bed.  But with the weird upon him that he might not look back upon her until they had returned to the land of the living.

Uncertain that the gods had not tricked him, he had turned at the last moment, just in time to see her fade from him forever.

Now Bredg trusted the gods even less than that Greek of old had, and with better reason.  And he was afraid. So afraid that her steps - firm and soft - each after another behind him, and the puff of her breath now and then, pure white in the cold air,  were a lie and that he would wake alone again and again. 

“So, Kjell’s grown now.  Has his own farm and all,” he heard her say.  “And Soren’s king. What have you been doing, then?”

He stopped, his head throbbing.  She wanted to chat! Gone for three years with no word and the woman wanted gossip!  Turning quickly, so she almost bumped into him, he took her by the wrist. Her brown eyes were as wide and clear as ever, as if she came back to him with no more secrets than she’d had when he’d first taken her as a raider. 

Fire welled through him.  Fire of wanting. Fire of anger.  Burning away the sorrow that had lain like a mist over him for three years.  He nearly hated her at that moment.

“Why did you go to my brother first?”

“What?”  She pulled at his arm, and though she was stronger than she had been she was not as strong as he.  His fingers easily braceleted her little bones. 

“You came back and went straight to Soren rather than coming hom-, rather than coming to me.  Is there something between you? I hope not for your sake, he’s taken with his pretty new queen.” Even as he spewed the words out he wondered where they came from, knowing better.  

She knew better, too.

“Don’t be daft and picking a fight with me,” she said, pushing a finger into his chest.  “I went to him first because I was afraid I-”

Now she stopped, and he let her go.

She was afraid.

Still afraid of him.

Turning away, he started to walk again.

 

_ Meanwhile _ ….

_ Norine Breathnach was thirteen years old when she died.  Her father was driving their family home from his aunt’s funeral when he missed a patch of black ice.   _

_ Because she had been so close to Clara, her parents had let her sit in the front, her mom huddling in the backseat with her brothers.  She had accepted the rare boon with little grace, and had even refused the right of being allowed to choose the radio station. Instead, she leaned her head on the window and tried to block out the sounds of her older brother, Liam, bitching about how little room they had. _

_ The side spin into the car coming the other way wasn’t hard enough to do much more than crunch a fender and dent a back panel.  But the door on the passenger side of the old sedan had always been tricky, and old sedans didn’t have automatic seatbelts, so Norine was thrown into a patch of trees, her head striking a stump, and she was gone, her life barely started. _

_ When the paramedics arrived, they tried because the family was there, but they knew she was gone.   _

_ So it came as a bit of a shock when, with one chest compression, Norine sat bolt upright, gasping for air, staring around as if she had no idea where she was or what was happening.  Apart from a scar behind her right ear that she had for the rest of her life, the girl was no worse for wear, and perhaps a bit better. _

_ Certainly she had never had such an affinity for languages before. _

 

Noirin was not sure what was wrong with Bredg.  When she’d first seen him in the hall her heart had rattled against the cage of her chest, trying to drag her to him.  Which was the last thing she should do, she knew. 

He was ever cool and calm, with clever words to trick her and his blood ran with ice.  The last thing she should do is let him know how the sight of him made her wild. Made her want to crawl into his lap and press her face to his neck, to have him lay her across his bed and do as he will, open and there for him always.  And if she were lucky, to have him pull her to him and sleep with his arms about her. 

Three years of walking the world, making her own way, and one sight of him took her back.

Ah, but he looked weary.  

So she had played his game, with words and wit.  Played nearly as well as he did. But now, on the road to his house, she knew that he had changed as much as she had.

After letting her go, he stepped again and again, and then turned back again when he could tell she was not following.  “If you are afraid of me then why-,” his dark voice broke.

His head was down, that proud head, his whole arrogant way, was gone, and he was as weak before her as she had ever been before him.  “Not afraid of you. Afraid that you might have a new woman now. After all, even peaked as you are, I’ve never seen a prettier face than yours.”

“How could you think I would have another woman?”  That handsome face was aghast.

“We were together for what?  A few weeks. And were at each other’s throats for most of it.  Why would a man like you want to be alone waiting for me? But I thought maybe.  Maybe you would. Maybe you would.”

“I have.  I would. And longer.”

 

“Why?”  Her eyes were narrow.  Her bright eyes that he had dreamt of over and over again.

“Because you are  _ minn auðr, _ and I would not ever have another.”

A tear slipped from her eye, “I know what that means now.”

“I didn’t know it was true at first.  I called you that as a jest, the only thing I took from the raid that night when I was trying to save Soren.  What kind of fool doesn’t know when he’s telling the truth? You are my treasure. I love you Noirin. I’ve loved you since you threw off my cloak and ran naked to jump off my boat, to swim home or die.  Can you love me as well? After all?”

Like a child, she brushed the tear away with her knuckle, “Ah, well, that’s a sad thing.  That you loved me so long as that, all alone. And here I’ve _ only _ loved you since you jumped in after me.”

She stepped to him, and they took each other into their arms under the clear sky of night, and she nestled her head against his throat, and he nuzzled her hair.

 

_ Meanwhile _ ….

_ Loke Kjarsson was fifteen years old when he killed himself.  Granted, it was an accident, but he still did it.  _

_ His family were vacationing in Italy, touring the most expensive and exclusive spots.  They were in Genoa and he and his brother had been invited out for a day on the yacht of some distant relation of the von Baumbach’s who wanted to do business with their father.  He had spent the morning bored and irritated because the very hot, rather androgynous twenty year old who he had been trying to flirt with had paid him no attention, finally saying, “You’re beautiful, darling, but come back when you grow into those big paws of yours.” _

_ Putting that line aside as good enough to steal when he was older, Loke shrugged with a toothy smile and got up onto the rail of the yacht, intending to walk around the prow on the second story of the ship.  He had been a climber all of his life, with nearly preternatural balance and no fear.  _

_ However, even the most agile can fall and fall he did.  HIs older brother saw him go over the side, striking his shoulder and neck against the metal skin of the ship.  With no thought he dove in after his brother, whose limp, skinny body fell through the water nearly as quickly as he had the air. _

_ By the time they were both recovered Loke’s skin was cold as ice, and his eyes saw nothing.  August Reinholdt looked down at the dead boy and his sobbing brother and thought, “Well, there goes that deal.” _

_ Then, Loke blinked.  And again. And his mouth split into the most knowing smile. _

_ “Not to worry, Auggie, I’m sure daddy will still invest in your new project.  Just don’t expect the most favorable of terms. Get off me, Tor! I’m soggy enough.” _

 

Bredg’s house was unchanged, save for a thick rug underfoot.  

After a few moments of sharing heat and breath on the road, fire had lit between them, and they had half run the rest of the way, stopping now and then to almost kiss, to nearly touch, to stare with starving eyes at each other.  

When they had reached the long porch, Bredg had lifted Noirin, her long legs locked about his hips, her back pushed against the door, and they had rubbed against each other like they were youngsters first learning that rubbing felt damned good and rubbing on someone else felt better.  When he tried to kiss her, she speared her fingers into his hair, and pushed up with her thighs, so her heavily covered breasts were in his face. 

The music of her moan nearly made him spend then and there.  When she slid down him, to stand again, his hand went with her, between her legs.  The cloth was soaked through and she pushed shamelessly onto his palm.

When he managed to fumble the lock open, they practically fell in the door.  

Noirin put up a hand, and panting heavily, carried her harp case to sit in pride of place above his hearth.  “It carries the soul of a true bard. I can’t let anything be happening to it,” she said.

“Sit,” he ordered, gesturing to his great chair.

For just a second he could see the mulishness he loved about her, but now was not the time for her stubborn ways.  He pushed her into it and then knelt before her, taking her booted foot onto his lap, his fingers working the straps with ease.

When he had pulled it off, tossing the boot over his shoulder and her hosen as well, she pressed her arched foot into his aching cock, stroking with her toes.  It was not something she would have done before. For a moment he wondered if she had been with anyone during those three years…

He didn’t care.

She was with him now, and she would be going nowhere else.

Trying to keep his hands steady as she toyed with him, he took off the other boot and then, to hel with the hosen, he ripped the heavy linen of her pants pulling them from her, shoved her legs apart and buried his face between them.

 

The first touch of Bredg’s mouth on Noirin’s cunt made her scream and her legs tried to close.  She had not felt so vulnerable in so long and for a moment she was afraid. But his shoulders kept her open as he kissed deeper into her, his hands holding her wide to every exploring, greedy lick and fuck of his tongue.

The scream turned to a squeal, as she writhed.  It was too much, too sudden. She had felt raw with want and now… now she was trying to get closer and yet move away at the same time.  And then, then her peak came upon her as he took her pearl between his lips and sucked and worried it until she flew into pieces, her body heaving with pleasure, her voice loud enough to hear in the heavens.

“Fremr,” he murmured against her wet, still pulsing cunt.  He slid a finger into her, “I feel you holding me here,  _ auðr _ .  Squeezing me tight,” he teased her pearl with the tip of his tongue and crooked his finger to stroke in her, that secret place that he had found before that made her spend again in gush that he lapped up, moaning in pleasure.

 

_ Meanwhile _ ….

_ The woman who was called Norine Breathnach moved through the crowd, heading towards the attic and another drink.  She had discovered that her erstwhile hosts, the infamous Kjarsson brothers - who had been been ‘asked’ to leave Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and ETH Zurich, before ending up at the University of Chicago - had a second, private bar hidden in under the rafters of the huge house their parents had bought for them to live in while they tried to make it to graduation. _

_ Most of the students attending the brothers regular Friday night party were being served in the front hall where there were coolers of decent enough beer, cases of better than college average wine, and a full bar manned by a pair of gorgeous redheads.  But Norine had noted that the other uber-rich, haut ton, students were all making their way upstairs empty handed and were coming down with high-end champagne, scotch, and full bottles of Pliny the Elder.  _

_ She deserved the good stuff.  The only reason she was in this den of privilege was she had promised to be her roommate Anjeli’s wingman tonight as she tried to hit it with the older Kjarsson, Tor.  They had barely made it in the door when Anj had spotted her ex and disappeared in to the depths of the mansion, their faces attached at the teeth.  _

_ Well, that was almost the only reason.  The other reason was tall, black haired, and had no idea she was alive.  Then again, why would he? He was a peacock, and she was a wren, and never the twain should meet, most people would think.  _

_ ‘Even now that I’m in his house,’ she thought, watching the younger Kjarsson hand feed sushi to  a barely dressed co-ed who was perched on his knee, ‘nothing.’ _

_ The attic was less noisy and had several comfortable couches, so Norine took two bottles of Pliny and sat herself next to a pair of shy but brilliant Economics graduate students, who were surprisingly interested in the Great American Songbook.  At some point in the night one of them found a guitar and played while she sang “What’s New?” _

_ She wasn’t that surprised to wake up on that same couch, her head slightly aching, with one of the Economist’s heads on her shoulder and the other one asleep on the floor, her phone going crazy.   _

_ It was Anj.  “Shit, where are you?” _

_ “Where do you think I am, you bitch?” _

_ “How should I know?  I just know you aren’t on your way to meet with Dr. Corth.” _

_ “Oh, fuck me...”  She hung up on her yelling roommate.  She had a half hour to get to Corth’s office or she could kiss her internship goodbye.  She stank of party, and her outfit, while rather demure for the occasion was deeply inappropriate for work.  There was no way she could get to her place, take a shower, and make it.  _

_ Then she had an idea.   _

 

_ The man who called himself Loke wasn’t sure why he had woken up.   _

_ Neither of the bodies in bed with him had moved, and it was much too early for him to do so either.  And yet, here he was, staring at the ceiling.  _

_ Then he saw motion from the corner of his eye.  The door to his bathroom was partially open and someone was in there, just turning off the taps.   _

_ Had there been four people in his bed last night?  No, he was certain it was three. _

_ The door opened the rest of the way and a girl he had never seen before came out.  The light from the bathroom let him see that her short hair was damp, and she was wearing… she was wearing his clothes.   _

_ A pine-green cashmere sweater that he had left out to go to the dry cleaners, which was adorably large on her, a pair of the loose black sweats he wore for running that pulled delightfully over the swell of her fuller ass and hips that were much too long, but she had tucked into a pair of black athletic socks.  In her hand was a pair of ankle-boots that were probably her own.  _

_ He leaned up on his elbow, whispering, “Stop, thief.” _

_ She looked up at him, her face barely visible.   _

_ He didn’t know her. _

_ “Sorry,” she whispered back.  “Thanks for the loan,” she added as she left his room, pulling a cellphone from the small purse she had over her shoulder. _

_ Disentangling himself from his bedmates, he followed her out into the hallway.  “Are you calling the police on yourself?” She was on her way down the stairs and he leaned over the railing to watch her. _

_ “Uber.  Shit!“ She looked up at him as she finished tapping on her phone.  Her smile was broad and her eyes were brilliantly brown. “My stuff is still in your bathroom.  Bring my clothes to class on Wednesday, and I’ll bring these. I’ll try to get them cleaned before then.”  _

_ “Class?”   _

_ She laughed at the look on his face.  “Campbell’s Romantic Literature and Historical Novel.  I’ve been sitting in front of you all semester, you ass.”  And she was gone. _

_ Loke slumped forward, staring after her. _

_ Her laugh.  Her wild, snorting laugh.   _

_ “Bror, ved du, du er nøgen?” Tor asked him, coming out of his room, yawning widely and holding the door for one of the bartenders from the night before. _

_ Loke just waved him off, still watching where the door had closed behind her. _

 

Bredg left the paradise of Noirin’s sweet core long enough to strip her the rest of the way naked and then himself.  He needed to touch as much of her as he could all at once. She was limp and sated in his arms as he lifted her to carry to his bed.

When her back was on the blankets, she stretched languorously, her pretty breasts pulling taut, and his cock was near to splitting where it stood upright, brushing his belly.  His fingers returned to her swollen, sopping, brilliantly pink cunt, needing to stir her again. 

Now, finally, they kissed.

First just lips, a touch and then a bit more.  Then a bit open so they shared the air. Then her tongue gently, shyly entered his mouth, and he suckled upon it as he had her jewel, which he now started to tap.  Her hands touched him everywhere - his back, his chest where she pinched and fondled, down to his ass, even pulling him open so she could toy with him there just a bit.  

With a roar, Bredg rolled onto her and thrust in hard enough to make them both cry out.

 

_ Meanwhile… _

_ Norine sat nervously in her seat in the lecture hall, a neat stack of fresh laundry on her desk.  She wondered if he would bring her clothes back. She wondered if he would even show up for class.  _

_ It was almost starting time and most of the other students had filed in already.  Below, Professor Campbell just finished writing something on the board with her usual flourish and was turning towards them when she cocked her head, staring at something at the back of the class.   _

_ From behind her, Norine heard a wave of startled sounds, laughter, annoyance, confusion, anger, and some applause.  She took out a notebook and started copying from the board, refusing to look back. _

_ It had to be Him. _

_ He shuffled next to Her, sitting down, His long legs over the back of the seat in front.   _

_ He had remembered Her clothing. _

_ The skirt, which had been rather demure on Norine, was close to a micro-mini on Him, and the blouse was too small to button because of His broad shoulders, so He had a very tight tank under it and had rolled up the sleeves to above His elbows, showing off long, toned arms.   _

_ To accompany the outfit He had clearly straight ironed His pure black hair, and when He raised an elegant hand to push it away from where it had fallen over His green eyes, not only had He painted His nails a dark shade of pine, but He had perfect, smoky kohl about those eyes as well. _

_ He should have looked ridiculous. _

_ He was glorious. _

_ He leaned his head over, so He could whisper into Her ear while still looking at Campbell, who had rolled her eyes at Him but got started with her lecture anyway.   _

_ “Before you ask,” His breath burned Her, His deep voice was husky with longing and humor in equal measure, “I do have Your panties, too.  But I had to make a few alterations for them to fit. Min elskede, Sigyn.”  _

_ His soft, thin lips brushed Her temple, and the heat that poured from His body made Her shiver with longing. _

_ “Oh, mo Loki ciúin,” She whispered back, forcing Herself not to turn towards His mouth.  “Cá fhad a ligfidh siad dúinn saor?” _

_ His smile was as broad as eternity, “Disse kedelige væsner vil aldrig fange os, min lille gudinde.” _

_ With a sigh of contentment, Sigyn rested Her head on Loki’s shoulder, whilst still taking notes. _

 

Noirin took him in, feeling every inch of Bredg’s lovely, long cock as if for the first time.  It almost hurt, it had been so long, but she loved the burning stretch of it and she prayed to no god in particular that he would not take it easy on her.  She wanted to feel it the next day, with every step she took, and when she sat as well. 

There was no tenderness or affection to how he used her.  Only the basest need, with her legs over his shoulders, and he turned his head to bite her calf hard enough to mark, and she used him back, lifting against him to grind and grind herself against his bones.  

The build was as slow in her as their motions were hard, and she could see him biting down now on his own lip as he had her leg, deep enough to bleed, to keep himself from boiling over into her until he made her come again.  Long, wet fingers that had been under her hips, pulling and jerking, now started to slap on her pearl, hard and ringing, stinging and making her so sensitive and mad that when he stopped and so gently stroked it just once she convulsed, her back arching hard enough to crack, her arms flailing for nothing, her voice became a song.

His seed boiled over into her, and he dropped her legs so he could press kiss after kiss to her mouth, her chin, her neck, moaning, “ _ Auðr,  _ never go…” over and over again.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Bror, ved du, du er nøgen? - "Brother, you know, you're naked?"
> 
> “Cá fhad a ligfidh siad dúinn saor?” - How long will they let us go free?
> 
> "Disse kedelige væsner vil aldrig fange os, min lille gudinde." - These dull creatures will never catch us, my little goddess.


End file.
